


The Dark's Gonna Catch Me Here

by thereweregiants



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: (OW is here but it's not quite the same as canon), Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Demons, Hellhounds, M/M, Magic, Mild drug and alcohol abuse, Road Trips, brief suicide mention, canon AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:35:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26763691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thereweregiants/pseuds/thereweregiants
Summary: Under the sway of his family, Hanzo Shimada killed his brother.He brought him back - but there's a price to pay, and Hell always takes its due.
Relationships: Jesse McCree/Hanzo Shimada
Comments: 17
Kudos: 136
Collections: Danger & Dread: A McHanzo Horror Collection





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> originally written for a lovely McHanzo horror zine, Danger and Dread, that was one of the many victims of 2020. *pours one out*  
> on the bright side, it means I didn't have to edit my wordy ass down that much so *shrug*
> 
> there is some freaking fantastic art that goes along with this, that I'll add in or at least link once my technologically inept self figures out how
> 
> title from Robert Johnson's [Crossroad Blues take 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc9RUU4_cFw) because I have no subtlety

_ Plink. Plink. Plink. _

The drops of blood are small, all things considered. What they represent is so much more. 

Life. 

Shimada life. His brother’s life. The same life that runs through his own veins, although Hanzo’s heart is still beating and Genji - 

Genji is not doing much of anything anymore.

There’s murmuring around him, echoing off the stone walls of the Shimada castle’s war room. He can feel the eyes on him, the heavy judgment. What right have they to judge? Hanzo did everything they asked, everything they wanted. 

_ Everything. _

Genji’s blank eyes stare up at him, the same grey-brown Hanzo sees every time he looks in the mirror. 

Something in him says he’s not going to want to look in mirrors much anymore.

They’re saying things to Hanzo - what he needs to do, the meeting that is planned for that evening, his next steps against the Fujiki clan like his own brother isn’t dead at his feet. His sword is no longer dripping Genji’s blood, but the sound still echoes in his ears with the rhythm of his own, still-living heart. 

Hanzo feels numb, but in that numbness he finds clarity. It’s all absolutely pointless, isn’t it - the clan squabbles, the yammering of elders who haven’t touched a weapon in Hanzo’s lifetime but expect the younger members to throw themselves into harm’s way at a moment’s notice, up to and including the murder of his own kin. Of Genji.

That’s what it is, of course. Murder. Hanzo has killed for the clan since he was sixteen, but it was all in defense or as part of their intra-clan wars. This, though. This is -

Hanzo doesn’t know how he’s going to forgive himself for this.

He kneels, blood immediately soaking and spreading into the knees of his hakama. Blood doesn’t come out of silk, not really. Hanzo doesn’t think he’ll be wearing any part of this outfit again, in any event. He does his best to gather Genji together. An arm under his shoulders, another under his thighs - a familiar position from a hundred times of bringing him home over the past decades, asleep or inebriated or injured.

This time, though, there’s the horrible sound of raw meat sliding against itself, and Genji’s legs fall away to land wetly on the blood-soaked mat below. The sound that comes from Hanzo’s throat is animal, something not human. The talk around him dies down, leaving Hanzo’s harsh breathing as the loudest sound in the room. 

He has to heft Genji over one shoulder, under an arm. Like he’s transporting sacks of supplies instead of what used to be his laughing, charming brother. He walks out as calmly as he can, leaving behind his sword and his clan and gallons of blood and worse. He walks through the halls of the castle until he can’t anymore, leaving a trail of bloody footprints to mark his path. Entering the clan doctor’s office, he sets Genji down as carefully as he can.

The doctor looks from the body to Hanzo and back again - it’s obvious that nothing can be done and yet Hanzo is still here. 

“What -” the words are dry in Hanzo’s throat, ash and cobweb. “What could be done to preserve him?”

The doctor is careful when he answers, not wanting to upset the man clad as much in blood as anything else. “Preserve, Shimada-sama?”

Hanzo swallows. “Keep him from - keep him. So when he comes back it will be easier to repair.”

“Shimada-sama -” 

Hanzo looks up and there is blue fire in his eyes and flickering under his shirt. Normal medical procedures don’t always go quite as planned when the clan members that bear the Shimada legacy are involved. The doctor gives a short nod. “We have cryogenics units, I will clean him up and get him in as soon as possible.”

Sojiro had tried absolutely everything to extend his own life, Hanzo had figured that there would be something like that in place. He stares at the doctor for a long minute, an unspoken threat that he doesn’t need to elaborate on.

Hanzo leaves the pieces of his brother behind, the tacky dried blood on his feet marking the sound of his steps as he walks away with a straight back and determined gaze.

He has work to do.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Days of meditation, days of seclusion. Eating nothing, drinking nothing but cup after cup of genmaicha. The instructions were buried in a musty book deep in Sojiro’s private library. The elders tried to keep him out, but Hanzo just stared at them until they backed away from the empty look in his eyes. They’ve been tiptoeing around him for days, but he doesn’t know how long it will last.

He wears nothing but thin linen that does little to protect him from the cold stone floor of the family temple. The temple is old, older even than many of the ancient religions of his country. There have been Shimadas as long as there have been dragons - or perhaps the other way around. No one knows which came first, but the ties between the two go back farther than their records do.

On what Hanzo thinks might be the dawn of the fourth day - between the lack of food and lack of sleep, everything is hazy and unreal - there’s a tiny spark of fire in the eyes of the largest dragon statue in front of him. The sparks jump from statue to statue - seemingly every color and no color at once, white and solid and black and transparent and every one of them staring at him.

The dragon spirits - or are they spirits of his ancestors? Is there any difference, in the end? - don’t speak. They’re greater than speech, greater than language. It’s just massive waves of emotion that sweep over Hanzo, crushing his body - frail and only human - to the floor. None of them are good, it’s all frustration and anger and a healthy dose of disappointment. Tears stream down Hanzo’s face and drip to the floor, the dark stone absorbing them like they never existed.

A Shimada does not kill a Shimada, is what it comes down to in the end. Brother does not kill brother. Hanzo was weak, allowed himself to be influenced by those who weren’t worthy of controlling the dragons and yet controlled Hanzo in the end. 

There would be no help, no succor from his ancestors. He can feel that they could bring Genji back, if they wished. But Hanzo is a kin-killer who does not deserve such a gift, does not deserve to be granted wishes, barely deserves to be a Shimada.

Someone like that does not deserve dragons.

It feels like his soul is being ripped away, then. The pain in his arm is only the start of it - it goes into his chest, into the very being of him. Some interminable time later Hanzo raises his head, face streaked with bloody tears. His arm - 

His arm is no longer what it was. The storm clouds and lightning are as vibrant as ever, but his dragons - his dragons that were etched into himself through days of blood and pain, are dull and lifeless on his skin, the blue gone grey and inert. The flesh itself seems nerveless - when he touches it, it’s like touching a stranger. 

The lights in the statues’ eyes wink out, and he knows that their faces are turned from him.

Hanzo doesn’t bother with any protest, any further pleas. He has been rejected as thoroughly as he could be by centuries of his family. He pulls his shirt close around him, tugs the sleeves down until they cover his shame.

Despite it all, he still walks away with his head held high. Hanzo may have been rejected by the very core of what he thought he was but - if he doesn’t have Genji, if he is a manipulated murderer of the only close family he had left, would it even be worth it to be a Shimada?

There is more research to be done. 

-x-x-x-x-x-

Hanzo tries rituals and rites from a dozen religions, twice as many cults, even more bits and pieces from witches and wise men the world over.

Nothing works.

His brother is still dead and frozen solid, Hanzo’s arm is still grey, and he wanders through the halls of the castle like a mad, lonely ghost.

He turns to the internet, taking conspiracy theories as seriously as gospels. At first there’s nothing. Then, he finds a song. Then another, and another. Rumors and half-said truths, here and there. Old singers with older memories saying that perhaps this could work, perhaps, perhaps.

Stories about a place in a country that is young but where two roads have met for thousands of years. A place where fools go to make their fortune, but end up losing everything else in the end. The recent stories say that the Devil will meet you there, the older ones talk about crossroads spirits, the most ancient sources about an anima that inhabits the space between two realms.

Hanzo doesn’t care. All he sees is a chance.

He books a flight to Memphis, Tennessee. He’s been to America many times before - this or that assignment that Sojiro would send his sons on, keeping the far-flung members of the family in line. It was always large cities, though, where they would wear sharp suits and expensive jewelry. There’s none of that now. Hanzo lands, gets on a small shaky plane that takes him to Greenville, Mississippi. He’s given curious looks when he exits the gate, feeling out of place in his tailored three-piece.

In the airport store he buys a sweatshirt, immediately becoming more invisible as he puts it on and pulls up the hood despite the sweltering late-spring heat. The last thing he needs is to attract attention here, so he just quietly rents a car and starts the drive to Dockery.

The dingy hotel room isn’t the worst place Hanzo has stayed, but just barely. None of it matters, though. He’s not here for sleep. Carefully he pulls out the bits and bobs that he’s been told he needs - graveyard dirt and ashes from burnt hair and things best not thought about, bags of materials that he’ll need before too long. 

Hanzo meditates until the sun meanders its slow way below the horizon, doesn’t move as the evening insects begin to sing. When the alarm on his tablet goes off he rises, dresses all in black. He’d pretend that it was for camouflage but in truth black is what he’s mostly worn since Genji’s death. Hanzo refused to allow any mourning services for Genji, has refused to acknowledge his death. He still wears black, though.

He packs everything up, leaves the hotel on foot and leaves his tablet on the bed. All the sources he found said that he shouldn’t drive there, should keep technology away. The day’s heat still lingers on the ground, radiates up off of the asphalt. It’s not an unpleasant walk, in the end.

There’s a monument at where popular culture says the crossroads is, over in Clarksville. That’s not the real one, though. Not according to everything Hanzo read. The real crossroads doesn’t like people, and supposedly moves itself around whenever humanity gets too close. It’s been in the same spot for a while, though, the same spot that a poor blues musician stumbled to a century ago. The place that Hanzo is making his way to now.

He leaves the side of the road he’s been on since the hotel, walks down gravel for a mile or so. The map he holds says he has another few miles to go but Hanzo pauses near a large tree with the familiar odor of cedar. He’s never seen it as a tree before, just as aromatic wood in closets and dressers. There’s a path around the tree, not one of human make but that looks to be worn by animals. 

Hanzo doesn’t know why he turns and walks into the field, just knows that he does.

He isn’t quite aware of the passage of time - something not good for his current task, as every source he could find said that he should do the rite at the stroke of midnight. The moon is full above him, shining down and turning the small plants growing in the fields around him to the color of old bone. The sound of insects have died away, it’s just Hanzo’s feet quietly padding along the dirt path.

The path continues on as far as Hanzo can see - no longer the wavering line drawn by migrating animals, this looks like it was measured with a ruler. And just ahead, another path crossing from side to side. 

Hanzo draws shaky breath. This is what he is here for. 

Nothing changes, when he enters the crossroads. Not at first. Hanzo hangs the bag of goofer dust around his neck and pulls out the containers he carefully packed. He draws circles around himself, lines of salt and silver and semen that unexpectedly glow when he closes each one. He stands to tuck the bags into a pocket and -

Someone is in front of him.

Hanzo is too well-trained to startle, a good thing given the small size of the circle he’s in. The person - person? - in front of him appears to be a human man. Normal, from everything that Hanzo can see. The man takes a soundless step to the side, and Hanzo turns slightly to keep him in his sight. He walks a circle around Hanzo, and Hanzo watches him in return.

He’s tall, the man. Blond haired and blue eyed and square chinned, looking like he stepped out of the pages of some patriotic American magazine. It’s not what Hanzo was expecting. He’s not exactly sure what was going to be waiting for him - scarlet-skinned and black-eyed devils? Something out of Christian mythology, given the fact he is in America and a country shapes its own spirits? Or something older, perhaps, a creature undefined in Hanzo’s head apart from being  _ other. _ Just not...this. 

“It’s been a while since I’ve had a visitor here,” the man says. His voice isn’t what Hanzo expects, either - deep and sounding like it got run over by a truck or two. His tone is pleasant, though. Friendly.

Hanzo doesn’t want to talk to him, but knows there’s no choice if there’s a chance of him getting what he wants. “You are - not what I expected,” he finally says, careful and polite.

The man tilts his head to the side, a smile playing at the corners of his wide mouth. “What, you wanted a forked tail and horns?”

Narrowing his eyes, Hanzo shakes his head. “How do I know that you are who I need to talk to?”

The man steps closer, until his toes are just on the other side of the circle. His lips part in a grin, and his teeth are somehow too long, too sharp. “All devils were angels once, before we Fell.” Hanzo blinks and suddenly the man’s face is almost too beautiful to look at but is also slashed with vicious, deep cuts that show glowing bone beneath. Rising behind him from his shoulders are two pieces of what look like splintered bone, blackened with ash and burnt blood, bits drifting through the air that might have been feathers before they were singed to near nothingness.

Hanzo blinks again and it’s back to smiling, doll-like perfection. “You can call me Jack,” the man says. “Now what can I do for you?”

Jack the Ripper and Springheel Jack and Jack Scratch - the Westerners do like their stock characters, don’t they. Hanzo swallows through a mouth gone dry, and keeps his voice steady when he says, “I would like to make a deal.”

Jack’s smile doesn’t move an iota. “Of course you do. You all do.” He tilts his head the other way and somehow suddenly seems closer, even though the tips of his perfectly shined shoes are still at the edge of the outermost circle of salt. “I have fed from the likes of Theophilius and Faust, from Paganini and Johnson. What do you, scorned scion of the Shimada clan, possibly have to offer me?”

Hanzo shouldn’t be surprised that his identity is known, but somehow he still is. Somehow, even though all of this, it feels unreal, like he’s going to roll over and be on his futon at home in Hanamura. “What do you want?” he replies. “I have -”

“You have nothing I want, not anymore,” Jack says, and his eyes pointedly trace the lines of Hanzo’s arm where his dead dragon lies underneath. “Now if you hadn’t made me your last resort, if you still had your family’s legacy, then we could have talked.”

No. No, that’s not how this works, it’s not -  _ no. _ “Take me,” Hanzo says, desperately. If nothing else, perhaps something good could come of this. “Bring him back and take me.” 

Jack laughs, and it’s like mountains shattering. “You think you’re not mine already? I have all the time in this world and the next, Hanzo Shimada, and you killed your own brother.” 

“Not -” Hanzo thinks desperately, grabs at the thinnest of threads. “Not if I spend the rest of my life redeeming myself. Becoming the best person I can be and repenting.” If this Western devil man really is playing by traditional rules, true repentance is the path to salvation. And no one hates what he did more than Hanzo himself. 

“Hmm.” Jack starts to walk a circle around Hanzo again, this time so close Hanzo can feel the air move from his passing. “You’re a stubborn bastard, you would do it at that.” He comes to a stop. “So I take you and bring your brother back.”

“Yes, wait - no.” 

“No?” Jack sounds so exaggeratedly incredulous it makes Hanzo want to punch him. Hanzo feels that the absolute last thing he should do right now is to set a single finger outside the circles, though, so he just takes a deep breath. 

“Let us have some time together. You gave - you gave Robert Johnson ten years, Faust too.”

“Jabez Stone got seven.”

“Which was argued to ten as well. Also, fictional.”

Jack grins that too sharp smile. “As far as you know, Hanzo.” He narrows his blue eyes, looking Hanzo up and down slowly. Hanzo feels like he’s being measured, his body or - perhaps his soul. He blinks and is back to his previously faintly smiling self, teeth covered. “All right. Ten years of both you and your brother on this earth, after which you become mine.”

“And Genji is alive and healed of his injuries,” Hanzo says, because the last thing he wants is to have his brother come back to life just to bleed right back out and leave Hanzo to Hell and a decade alone.

Jack waves a careless hand through the air. “Yes, yes, your brother will be perfectly alive for those ten years, assuming his own stupidity doesn’t get him killed again.” Hanzo opens his mouth, but Jack cuts him off with, “Come on, you know the only reason an overdose or a jealous lover didn’t get him is because you were there first.” 

Hanzo hates the fact that he’s right. 

Jack takes a step back, leaving bare, dead ground between Hanzo and himself. “Come forward, Hanzo Shimada, and seal your pact.” 

The last thing in the world that Hanzo wants is to step outside the safety of the circle, but knows he’s going to have to in order to shake his hand or sign the contract in blood, whatever is the style for deals with the devil nowadays. Every instinct he has is screaming at him to stay put, but Hanzo deliberately shifts his weight, takes a step forward before he can think about what he’s doing. 

Without the barriers Jack seems infinitely tall, the only thing Hanzo can look at. When he tries to turn his head he finds he can’t - his body is locked in place. Jack reaches to cup Hanzo’s sharp cheekbone in one hand, and his fingers are the coldest thing Hanzo has ever felt. 

“Ten years, Hanzo Shimada. No more, no less.” The blue of Jack’s eyes is like the center of a flame, burning hot enough to melt even as his hand freezes Hanzo’s face. Without warning he leans forward and kisses Hanzo gently. Oddly enough it’s a normal kiss, soft lips and gentle pressure - right up until sharp teeth bite into Hanzo’s lower lip and his mouth is suddenly dripping blood. 

Hanzo jerks back - he can move now. His eyes open from where they had closed against the brightness of Jack’s eyes to find himself alone in the middle of fields. He reaches up to feel his lip, and it’s completely healed, just a faint scar that he can only just tell exists. 

There is still blood in his mouth, though.

Hanzo scuffs a foot through the circles, now dull against the dirt, and starts the long walk back. 

-x-x-x-x-x-

“What do you mean he’s  _ gone?” _

The doctor cowers beneath Hanzo’s rage, hands up in protest and protection. “It was Overwatch, Shimada-sama.”

“What.”

“The cryogenics facility in which your brother was being kept. It was raided, we think that there was someone there they were looking for. Not your brother but - they found him. We don’t know if they’re aware of who he is.”

Hanzo takes a deep breath and tries not to stab something as he walks out. That...that bastard. Genji was going to be taken care of and healed up all right, and being ensconced in Overwatch was going to make him nigh-untouchable. Sojiro had always taught them to avoid Overwatch like the plague - they were too large, too public, too powerful. The wrong kind of attention.

His feet take him to his quarters, automatically. He looks around the spartan room, sees a life laid out before him that has lost the last remnants of interest for him. Hanzo takes a seat at his desk and pulls out his tablet. He activates an overlay that Genji put in for him years ago, one that makes it appear that he’s checking the news sites when in actuality a privacy mode is running, quietly untraceable.

“It’s just in case, anija,” Genji had said, tapping away at the screen. Hanzo had rolled his eyes, pushing at Genji with a foot until he’d slid off the end of his futon. Genji just kept typing away.

“I don’t need to hide anything. Why would I need some secret incognito mode?” Right now Hanzo is the pampered elder prince of a clan that no one can touch. He’ll never want for anything, he has no need of hiding anything away. Genji was paranoid.

Genji had finished typing and tossed Hanzo’s tablet on the futon. He’d wrapped a callused hand around Hanzo’s ankle, fingers tightening for just a moment. “You welcome their shackles like a lover who wants to be tied up,” he’d said nonsensically. “I worry for the day when you wake up and realize what’s been happening.” 

Hanzo had sat up, pulling his legs under him and free from Genji’s grip. He tilted his head, looking at his brother quizzically. “Is something...wrong?” Genji had never gotten along with their father nor the clan elders very well.

A sigh, a shake of a green-dyed head. “No, no. Come on, let’s go get some dinner.” They had wandered off to the kitchens and Hanzo had forgotten about what Genji had installed, until now.

Had he known? That this would be coming, that Hanzo would be manipulated like this? Hanzo doesn’t know if it would be better or worse that Genji’s last moments might have been spent thinking that Hanzo had folded just like Genji had always thought he would. 

There’s a soft cracking sound, and Hanzo looks down to see his grip has shattered the side of his tablet screen. 

He types quickly, moving money from his Shimada bank accounts to secret ones he’d established long ago. Just because he had been under the clan’s thumb hadn’t meant he was stupid, after all. 

Hanzo then looks around his room, at twenty odd years of existence that’s resulted in surprisingly little that he finds important. He packs up some clothing, a few books. A sake bottle Genji gave him. His quiver and bow, which now has a stained orange scarf wrapped around it. He stares at his sword for long minutes before leaving it. He doesn’t think he’s going to pick up another sword anytime soon.

He leaves all technology, wary of tracking devices. Packing everything up tightly, he puts on neutral dark clothing and leaves. On his way out he stops by the doctor’s office. 

“Here,” Hanzo says, holding out to him a scrap of paper with an anonymous email address on it. “If you hear anything about Genji…”

The doctor nods, takes the paper. Hanzo leaves quickly. He trusts the doctor to contact him, but is also sure that he’s alerting the elders right now. Sure enough, Hanzo hears the faint buzz of an alarm, and the side gate that he just exited clanks as it locks tight. 

Hanzo takes a last look at his childhood home and turns his back on it to walk into the depths of Hanamura. 

-x-x-x-x-x-

“Hanzo.”

It sounds like Genji’s voice, but he hears Genji a lot these days. It doesn’t mean anything.

“Anija, what has become of you?”

Hanzo cracks a bleary eye open. It certainly sounds like Genji, there’s even Genji’s body language crouching before him, but it’s some omnic that’s looking at him with a glowing green visor. Hanzo knew that this last batch he got from Cortez was bad, he was seeing Sojiro all over the place last week. He’s out of money right now though, and doesn’t have the energy or motivation to pull a job to get more. He’s been living off of nicotine and cheap sake, but got hungry enough that the pills looked pretty good. At least when he’s hallucinating he’s not thinking about his empty stomach.

The hallucination is rather pushy, pulling him to his feet and shoving him through the shithole apartment he’s been in for the past month. Impersonal metal hands strip him and shove him into the shower, before it’s turned on. Cold, of course.

Hanzo splutters, finally awake for what seems like the first time in weeks. He stares up through the falling water at the omnic before him. The thing crouches down before him and after a half minute of looking at Hanzo, touches something on the side of its head. The faceplate cracks open and separates. There’s skin beneath, scarred skin and the same grey-brown eyes Hanzo sees when he has the misfortune of looking in a mirror.

Body and brain finally deciding to coordinate and do something sensible, Hanzo passes out.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Hanzo wakes up to the smell of ramen. Not just any ramen, but the ramen from the Rikimaru Ramen stand right outside of where he grew up. But that’s back in Hanamura and Hanzo is in...Portugal? Something like that.

He blinks his eyes open and yes, there’s the water-stained ceiling of the place he’s been in Vila Nova de Gaia. He puts a hand to his head, wincing against the pounding. When he moves his fingers, he touches his hair curiously. It’s clean. Hanzo is relatively sure he hasn’t showered in at least a week or two, so that’s odd. Looking down his clothes are clean too, as well as the sheets on the couch he’s laying on. He didn’t think that he’d owned any sheets at all. Huh.

“Finally awake, eh?” The figure from before comes into the room holding two bowls, and the memories from the last time Hanzo was awake come rushing in. The faceplate and helmet are completely gone now, revealing black hair and a face from his past. 

“Genji?”

“In the flesh.” He blinks, rolls his eyes. “So to speak.”

“You’re...here.”

“I am.” He settles himself crosslegged at the coffee table. There’s the soft sound of air releasing as he folds himself up. Hanzo is still frozen, staring. It...looks like Genji. His face is scarred up - some Hanzo recognizes with pain to be from the cuts he himself gave in the last moments of Genji’s life, others are new. His chin and throat are covered in metal, though, and no other skin is visible.

“How are you here?” he asks, finally.

Genji swallows a mouthful of egg before setting his chopsticks down and looking at Hanzo. “You’re not surprised to see me alive, just to see me here. Now why is that?”

Hanzo looks away. Eight years ago he’d saved his brother and damned himself. He knew that he’d be unlikely to see Genji again, even as he heard about Overwatch’s fall. Hanzo had hidden himself too well. 

“I’d always wondered, you know. How Overwatch was able to get me so well taken care of, all cryogenically frozen and perfectly preserved, stitched up and clean even though I was the next best thing to dead.” 

Hanzo sends a silent thank you to that doctor whose name he’d forgotten years before.

“And now I think there’s an explanation.” Genji doesn’t resume eating, just looks at Hanzo with calm eyes.

Hanzo - Hanzo doesn’t know what to say. Genji looks healthy, happy now. He can’t tell him what that cost. Licking his lips, he clears his throat. “I had - hoped. That once we developed the technology we would be able to bring you back. I just -” his voice fails him, unable to articulate his self-hatred in that moment, the reason for how far he had fallen. Unable to apologize for ruining Genji’s life. “I regretted it as soon as it happened.”

“I don’t.”

Hanzo’s head jerks up, looking at Genji sharply.

Genji sighs, relaxing a bit from his straight-backed position. “I won’t say I didn’t hate you for years. Hated myself, hated the universe. But I finally got to live outside of the compound, figure out who I was apart from being a Shimada.” Scarred lips curve up in a faint smile. “I also spent some time with the Shambali, learned how to live in this world.”

“I’m not,” Hanzo starts, stops. “I’m not someone you want to be around, nowadays.”

Genji nods. “That’s why I threw out your pills, save what we’ll need to wean you off. The alcohol, too.” He gives Hanzo a disgusted look. “I have literally never had worse sake, and you know the shit places I’ve been to.”

“You don’t get to come in here and start running my life,” Hanzo says, suddenly furious.

A laugh, but not unkind. “What life, anija? You kill people to get your next fix, which you probably need because you’re killing people all the time!” He takes a breath, leans forward to look at Hanzo carefully. “You saved me once, let me do this for you.” After a pause he nods at the ramen. “Let me know if I got it right. I think I did.”

Hanzo sits silently for a full minute. He’s spent so much time hating himself and his family because of what he had done, but now that Genji is in front of him and seemingly happy he - he doesn’t know what to do. It was a horrible purpose, surely, but he’s now lost his life’s purpose. 

He slides off the couch, settles inelegantly across from Genji at the coffee table. The ramen does smell fantastic. He takes a tentative spoonful, and Genji smiles.

-x-x-x-x-x-

“What are you up to this week?” There’s the quiet sound of a door closing behind Genji’s words. 

Hanzo’s in the kitchen of their small cottage, stirring at the curry he has on the stove with a frown on his face. It’s missing something, and he’s not sure what. “Come taste this, tell me what you think.”

Genji wanders in, shedding his sweatshirt and draping it over one of the chairs at the kitchen table as he goes. He tries a spoonful, thinking for a moment. “More chili paste,” he says, before going to pull a bottle of water out of the fridge. “Again, what are you up to this week? If you’re not doing anything, tomorrow Martin had a shipment of medicine he wanted escorted to Heathrow.”

After Genji helped Hanzo dry out, they moved to the south of England. No one would expect them there, and they spoke the language. They’d started up a partnership together - bodyguarding, mostly. There was violence sometimes, but it wasn’t the kind that used to happen where Hanzo would hunt people to ground and execute them, only what was needed for protection. They’d developed a reputation, a good one, and situated right next to the English Channel let them get business from all over.

“That sounds good. I didn’t have anything on until later in the week, that one jewelry store wanted eyes on an order from Columbia.”

“Drugs?”

“Emeralds.”

“Ah.”

Hanzo sets bowls down in front of both of them, before his head jerks and he looks out the window. Genji sets his spoon down with an exasperated clatter.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong with you? The past two days you’ve been twitchy like you’re expecting someone to burst through the door at any moment.” When Hanzo doesn’t immediately answer, Genji nudges him with a metal foot - less annoyed and more worried. “Hanzo?”

“The Smythes, they didn’t call you about their dogs getting out again, did they?”

Genji frowns. “No, and I saw them with the sheep just as I was coming in. Why?”

That was what Hanzo’s been afraid of. He looks out the window again, seeing nothing but pleasant, English countryside. No sign of the baying and growling hounds he keeps hearing, just at the very edges of his awareness. He’s been avoiding looking, avoiding confirming, but he doesn’t think he can keep it off any longer. He looks at Genji for a moment, knowing that their pleasant existence here is likely about to come to an abrupt and bloody end. “Give me a moment.”

Hanzo goes into his room - warm wood and large windows, the opposite of his room in the family castle - and grabs an old tablet, one he set aside years ago when he bought a new one but somehow never got rid of, thinking in his worst days that he could sell it for a fix. He brings it out to the kitchen and Genji’s curious glances, plugging it into the wall so it can charge.

They eat in companionable silence for a few minutes, until the tablet gives a cheerful ding that it has enough charge to be used. Hanzo sets aside his food, appetite lost. He taps at the tablet, pulls up the email app. Looks at a throwaway address he hasn’t used in many years, looks at the plane tickets booked to America. 

Looks at the date.

Hanzo closes his eyes, in grief. For himself, for the life that he’s built. For his brother, again. 

“Anija.” From the sound of it, it’s not the first time Genji’s tried to get his attention while Hanzo has been in his own head. He opens his eyes and looks at his brother. 

“Genji, I need to - I need to tell you about what happened...after.”

“After what?”

“After I killed you.”

Genji frowns. “You didn’t kill me. I mean, you nearly did, but that’s when they put me in cryopreservation. How Overwatch was able to get me, repair me.”

Hanzo takes a deep breath, knowing that he’s about to ruin everything. Haltingly he tells Genji the truth. How he was cut in two, how he was cold, dead meat. How Hanzo tried everything, the true reason his dragons went dull and grey. How he went to America and made his deal. How it was coming due.

Genji is silent, face unmoving and still in a way he can do now. Hanzo doesn’t know if it’s from the injuries or from his time with the monks, but he hates it. Genji stands wordlessly and leaves their small cottage. Hanzo watches from the window as Genji closes his faceplate up, tugs up the hood of the sweatshirt he grabbed, and starts to run. 

-x-x-x-x-x-

Hanzo is in his room late that night, intent on research, when he hears the door to the house open. He doesn’t move, just types away. The sound of the shower starts up, and Hanzo tunes the noise out. He’s currently deep in American case law, trying to find...any kind of loophole. Not that ‘how to get out of a deal with the devil’ is listed in LexisNexis, but there certainly is a lot of information on how to weasel out of contracts.

Genji comes in eventually, the eucalyptus scent from the same soap he’s used since childhood such a familiar assault on Hanzo’s nose he has to bite his lip. He’s not going to be seeing or smelling Genji anymore, soon.

“We summon him again, and he takes me instead of you,” Genji says matter of factly. 

“Absolutely not.”

“No, listen -”

_ “No!” _ Hanzo roars, and Genji falls back a step. “I had to give  _ everything _ I had to get you back, you are not allowed to throw it away like that.”

“And how do you think I feel?” Genji snaps back. “To find that you had done -  _ that _ to yourself, just to save me, and eight years passed before I even saw you again!”

“Would you have wanted to see me, in those eight years?” Hanzo says, quietly, sadly. Honestly.

Genji doesn’t say anything. They’ve spoken about it over the past two years, understood the path that both men took in the aftermath. For the most part they just try and focus on their present, their future.

“When?”

Hanzo is silent.

“Hanzo, when?”

“Ten days,” he lies smoothly. He has five, if that. He’s not quite sure with the time differences, honestly.

Genji nods down at the tablet in Hanzo’s lap. “I’m assuming that you’re looking for solutions?” Hanzo nods silently. Genji nods again, decisively. “Well, then. We’ll work together. Let’s go into London tomorrow, I have a connection at Oxford that can let us into the Bodleian.”

Hanzo tries to smile. It’s not particularly successful. “Thank you.” He waits for Genji to fail to smile in return and leave, shutting the door to Hanzo’s room quietly. Hanzo waits another minute, for the door to Genji’s room to close as well.

He turns back to his tablet, and hits “buy now” on a single ticket to Mississippi that takes off in five hours.


	2. Chapter 2

Hanzo’s hands are shaking as he draws the circles, shining in the moonlight. It’s the same time of year as the decade before, but he swears the cotton plants around him are taller, looming. He’s sure they’re green in daylight but now they all look like shards of steel-edged bone, ready to stab him if he comes too close.

The circles are closed and - 

Nothing happens.

They don’t glow, no one appears. Hanzo digs out of his pocket the faded and tattered scrap of paper that he’s held on to for all these years, with an incantation he had to kill a man to obtain. He didn’t have to do this last time, Jack had appeared almost immediately.

He wonders if it’s because he’s not supposed to be here, to be doing this.

Hanzo says the words written phonetically in no language he knows of, twisting on his tongue until his lips feel raw. He pulls out a pocket knife as he speaks the last words, cuts deep - too deep - into his wrist and lets the blood fall onto the circles. They turn red - salt and silver and semen drawing the pigment into themselves slowly at first, before the color then zips around quickly. The moment all three are the color of blood they burst into flame, a concentrated heat surrounding Hanzo that he wants to flinch from, but there’s nowhere to go.

When Hanzo takes his hand away from where it’s covered his eyes as the flames die down, there are two figures in front of him. 

One is still, the other paces. The still figure draws the eye: he’s tall, his edges fading into darkness. Dusky skin and darker eyes, but the same sharp white teeth as Jack. Hanzo looks into his eyes for only a split second - they’re like fifty miles of empty road that you would never come back alive from. A scarred face like Jack’s was momentarily as well, but these look more like, like burns perhaps, or claw marks. Maybe both. A suit so sharp you could cut yourself on it, except where it occasionally has burned to ash. Hanzo tries not to look too closely at the burned out spots, he thinks he might see bone and worse through the fabric’s singed edges.

“Hanzo Shimada. You’re early.” The man’s voice is deep, lazy. Something about it reminds Hanzo of Sojiro’s tone when he would speak at clan meetings and expect absolute obedience. When he would speak to Hanzo and Genji afterwards.

Clearing his throat, Hanzo summons every bit of sangfroid and confidence he’s ever experienced. “I was wondering -”

“No deals.”

Hanzo’s mouth is still open. He closes it as unobtrusively as he can before trying again. “I just wanted to know -”

“No,” the man says again. “We have you, Shimada. You haven’t done anything near what you’d need for true repentance, just dug yourself into a hole of addiction for most of your time.” He shakes his head, eyes still locked on Hanzo’s face. “You were unkillable during that time, by the way. Part of the contract. If you don’t get ten years then we haven’t held up our part of the deal.” The man smiles, and it’s the most terrible thing Hanzo has ever seen. “You should be dead a dozen times over, you know. You’re welcome for that.”

Hanzo grinds his teeth, and the spreading of the man’s grin says he can hear it. “All my research says no contract is unbreakable. There is always an option, a loophole.” 

The man laughs, and it’s like the sound of screams blown through a field of clattering bones. “Of course. You’re just not good enough to find it. Well, to have found it, rather. It’s too late now.”

Hanzo’s attention has been so locked on the devil man that he completely forgot there was another person - person? close enough - there with them. He’s been pacing back and forth, like an animal before an earthquake. The devil man snaps his fingers, and the other man settles down, a deeper shadow behind him.

“I don’t trust you, Hanzo. Call it overspill, from dealing with your father.” The man’s smile fades a bit, and Hanzo is filled with a moment of savage glee at his father being a pain in the ass even in the afterlife. “You have five days left, but I’m going to leave a little insurance.” 

Hanzo opens his mouth to ask what that means, before the man snaps his fingers once more and vanishes like he never existed.

The other man, however, is still there.

Not moving an inch outside of his circles, Hanzo looks him over. He probably would be as tall as the devil man, but he’s hunched over. Not cowering, far from it - more like he’s about to leap into battle and rip someone’s throat out. He has shaggy hair, half of it covering his face as he moves about, the other half pulled back. As he turns Hanzo can see vicious scars on the bare skin of the side of his head. His eyes are dark and fathomless - or the right one is, at least. His left eye occasionally glints red with what looks like flame.

“So you’re insurance,” Hanzo says as calmly as he can.

“I’m here to drag you down to hell,” the man says in an unexpected low drawl. He snaps his teeth in Hanzo’s face and grins when he flinches back. There’s some kind of - harness, or muzzle perhaps on his face, all black leather and shining dark teeth resting against his skin. Hanzo doesn’t want to think of what creature it might have come from.

“You’re - what. A courier?” Some kind of hellish Hermes, carrying souls all over the place?

“I’m one of the Hounds of Hell,” the man says matter of factly. “Gabriel sends us out to fetch whatever idiot made a deal, and we collect you.” Another quick grin, and Hanzo can’t tell which is more terrifying - the man’s own sharp teeth or the fact that the teeth of his muzzle seemed to drip blood for a moment. “You don’t have to be in perfect condition when we get down there, neither.”

Hanzo doesn’t move from the circle, but shifts his body just slightly. Looser posture, minutely tilted hips. “I don’t suppose there’s anything I could give you to not take me.”

The man looks him up and down, barks out a laugh. “Not that, darlin’. It’d mean my life as forfeit. We all have our masters.”

Hanzo’s brain works as fast as it can, looks at the man’s muzzle, remembers the snap of Gabriel’s fingers that brought him to heel. Looks at the scars on the Hound’s face. Thinks about loopholes. Thinks about the things he read in all his research from ten years ago.

He reaches a foot out, scratches a toe through the first circle, then the second. A deep breath, then the third. The flames are dead, there’s nothing protecting him now. “I’ve done a lot of research,” Hanzo says carefully. “Every contract has cracks, has ambiguities.”

The Hound shakes his head again. “He told you, you’re not -”

“Not me,” Hanzo says. He tilts his head, looks obviously at the harness around the Hound’s face, at the similarly styled leather straps he sees around his wrists. “I get the feeling that you aren’t here completely of your own free will.”

The Hound is silent.

“I read things. You have no idea of the research I did, the people I talked to before I did this a decade ago. They talked about deals like yours, how you’re under a contract of your own. How it could be broken.”

Before Hanzo can draw breath there’s a hand around his throat, nails like claws digging into his skin. Up close the Hound smells of animal musk and tobacco, salt and copper and strangely enough, gun oil. Hanzo can feel heat on his face from his fiery eye, chill on his face from the dark other one. 

“Tell me.”

Hanzo laughs the best he can with half his air choked off. “I’m not giving you my only leverage.”

The man’s eyes narrow. “You wanna deal, let’s talk deals.” He lets Hanzo go, but only steps back a single bare pace. “Set me free.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And what happens to me, you fool? I’m not waiting for some other hellhound to drag me down as soon as you’re gone.”

Another smile, smaller and cocky. “There is no other hellhound like me. People don’t make deals like they used to, not since people stopped believin’. You get me out of this shit, and they’ll have a hard time findin’ you without my skills.”

Hanzo frowns, looks at him carefully. “I set you free, you keep me safe from Hell. Safe from whoever they send after me next.”

“They’re not goin’ to -”

“Pardon me for not trusting you, thing whose name I don’t even know and just met.”

A long, measuring glance. “Jesse. Jesse McCree.” 

Hanzo nods, short and sharp. He pulls out his pocket knife, reopens the cut on his wrist that had scabbed over. Blood drips over his hand that he holds out. “Jesse McCree. I get you out of your deal and you get me out of mine. Safety afterwards included.”

“Fuck me over, and I’m takin’ your brother as well as you.” Hanzo nods stiffly. He’d expected something like that, insurance of some kind. Jesse cuts his own hand open with a quick bite. “Deal,” he says, and the blood on his teeth shines in the moonlight.

Two damned men shake hands at a crossroads, and a new contract is set.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Hanzo trudges back through the fields to the road that leads to the motel. Jesse paces silently at his side, footsteps making no noise even though he’s wearing knee-high dark boots with some kind of ridiculous spurs on them. 

He’s more or less visible, depending on if he’s in shadow or the cold moonlight, and so Hanzo puts together his appearance through short glimpses. The Hound has a close black jacket on, asymmetrical buttons over leather of some kind that has a strange texture that Hanzo doesn’t want to look too closely at. Black pants, tight enough to be interesting, with reinforced leather panels on the front and inner thighs. There’s a gun of an unfamiliar type hanging from his belt, heavy and brutal looking. 

Hanzo keeps trying to place him as being from this or that place - he has some kind of southern American accent, although not the same as the soft drawls he’d heard in the Mississippi airport. The black cowboy hat and black wrap of some thick material tossed around his shoulders combined with the excessive leather made Jesse seem like something out of the past, foreign and otherworldly.

Keeping his head down, Hanzo avoids the disapproving looks from the front desk assistant. A mysterious foreigner, and now bringing a man dressed in black that moves like a living weapon back to his room. How _scandalous._ Hanzo rolls his eyes as he walks down the hallway. 

He unlocks the door, tossing his jacket and the bag with his depleted materials on the small table before waving Jesse at a chair. Jesse doesn’t sit, however, choosing instead to prowl around the room, peering at the windows and doorways. 

“What protections d’you have?” he finally growls out, throwing himself into a chair like it had insulted him.

Hanzo blinks. “I was not able to bring any firearms on the plane,” he says calmly. “I have my bow and a few dozen arrows and an assortment of blades, however.”

Jesse shakes his head. “No. Mystical protection. Rowan, blessed oak, onion braids?” At Hanzo’s bewildered look, he stands back up and starts to pace. “Any stones? Amethyst, hematite. Even iron, at least.”

“Those...actually work,” Hanzo says after a minute of watching Jesse move back and forth. 

“To varyin’ degrees. Got any of them around here, anythin’ you could get your hands on? You need them.”

Hanzo pulls out his tablet, types away for a moment. “This seems to be a fairly Christian area, but there’s a hardware store that would have rowan and iron. Perhaps a jewelry store for the stones?”

Jesse frowns. “Not in the quantities you’ll need. You got cash?”

Hanzo raises an eyebrow. “The Forces of Hell can track my credit card?”

Jesse smiles thinly, the edge of a pointed tooth peeking out from behind his lips. “Who do you think owns all those companies?”

His vision tunnels in at the edges for just a moment - Hanzo feels like he’s reliving the first moments after he fled the family compound. The world against him and nowhere to turn. Before he can let panic overtake him, Jesse’s rough voice cuts through the memories.

“Did you plan for this at all?”

Hanzo glares up at him, anger clearing his head. “I apologize if I did not have ‘save a hellhound in order to save myself’ on my to-do list this morning.”

“So what, you just thought you could talk your way out of it? One human against thousands of years of Hell makin’ deals.” The contempt is clear.

“None of it,” Hanzo frowns at himself, thinking of how to phrase it. “None of it - seemed real. Yes, Genji survived, but perhaps it was just a miracle of modern science. It wasn’t until I heard the howling that I truly thought that - that it was actually happening.”

Jesse finally sits, on the edge of the bed this time. He nods at Hanzo’s arm. “Heard you lost your dragons. That wasn’t real enough for you?”

“Of course that was real. That is my family’s legacy, our religion. Not your -” Hanzo waves a hand in the air. “Your mythology. Most of what I had researched to make the deal in the first place was all folk tales.”

“You’re a folk tale yourself, now. Get used to it.”

Hanzo gives him a tightlipped smile before opening up a blank document on his tablet. “Let’s create a plan, then. What is the timeline of all of this?”

Jesse sits, finally. He picks at the leather edge of his pants for a minute with nails that seem disturbingly sharp. “Officially I’m supposed to bring you down in five days, but I doubt we’ll have that long. Two, maybe. If that. An’ there are already low level eyes on us, I’m sure.”

“What does that mean, practically?”

“No flights. Too easy to bring down a plane. Same with the hypertrains. Cars, and change ‘em out frequently.”

Hanzo brings up a map, as well as a page where he’s been keeping notes on how to break certain types of bargains. “Where you died, and where you were buried. Are they the same place?”

Jesse puffs on that cigar of his that never seems to go out, his hat shading his face so the only things visible are the twin red glows of the ember end of the cigarillo and his strange left eye. “Don’t think you need to know that.”

Narrowing his eyes, Hanzo’s hand visibly flexes on the edge of the tablet screen, the glass creaking warningly. “I really believe I do, Hellhound.” He spits the title out like the epithet it is. “Where.”

The cigar shifts to the other side of his mouth, and Jesse tilts his head, cracking his neck. “New Mexico. North of Santa Fe.”

Hanzo taps for a moment. “An eighteen hour drive. Doable in a day, if we take shifts.”

Jesse shakes his head. “Gotta couple stops to make, if that’s our end goal. New Orleans. Nacogdoches. Need to wiggle around along the way so they don’t know where we’re going.”

“Why are we making those stops?” Hanzo feels off balance, like he’s lost control of everything. This morning he thought he would merely die, now it feels like things are infinitely worse.

Getting up, Jesse wedges one chair under the door handle and drags a second over by the window. He settles himself, looking for all the world like he’s relaxing on a front porch somewhere. 

“Get some sleep, Hanzo Shimada. We’ve got work to do in the mornin’.”

-x-x-x-x-x-

Despite everything, Hanzo sleeps. Out of sheer emotional exhaustion, if nothing else. He opens his eyes in the grey moments before dawn to see Jesse in the same position that he was in hours before - foot propped up on the windowsill and cigar clenched between his teeth. 

“Did you get any rest?” Hanzo asks, voice raspy from disuse.

Jesse glances over, face unreadable as Hanzo sits up and stretches, setting down the knife he’d had clenched in one hand under his pillow. “I don’t sleep,” he says.

“Ever?”

Jesse just turns away, and Hanzo rolls his eyes. He could ask for a more pleasant travelling companion. “Where are we going today?”

“New Orleans.” When Hanzo pulls out his tablet, Jesse shakes his head. “Nah, don’t put anything in. We’ll just follow the river.”

“Follow...the river.”

“The Mississippi. Cross back an’ forth every once in a while. Runnin’ water’s good for disrupting surveillance.”

Hanzo nods slowly. He’s going to have to adjust his paranoia to ‘supernatural’ rather than ‘technological’, but it’s all the same in the end, he supposes. With a murmured comment to Jesse, he gathers his things and goes to the small, dingy bathroom to shower. He stares at himself in the mirror as he waits for the water to run hot. He looks tired, lines he swears didn’t exist a day ago arranged around his eyes. 

He exits ten minutes later, finger combing his damp hair from where he’s taken it out of his topknot. Jesse is staring out the window, one hand braced against the wall and the other drumming his nails on the bullets that line his belt. He glances Hanzo over with a long look, sneering as he does.

“If you’re done primping, we can get goin’.”

Hanzo glares right back, but his hands move quickly as he packs up. “Do we need to stop at that hardware store before we go?” he asks as they exit the room. 

“Depends. What car do you have?”

Hanzo gestures to it - it’s something bland, perhaps a decade old. Jesse shakes his head. “Return it to the rental place, get somethin’ old. With iron and steel in it. Won’t need to get materials ‘til later if we have that.”

With a shrug, Hanzo tosses his things into the trunk. He’s flying blind here - until he knows better, he’ll go with what Jesse recommends. 

For now.

An hour later they’re on the road in an ancient, boxy station wagon, something from decades before. It’s not until they’re an hour into the trip that it occurs to him - Jesse’s been keeping his head down, but he still looks like him. Harness on his face, glowing eye, pointed teeth. Looking half-feral with the scars on his head. 

“Are you going to be able to disguise yourself?”

“Pardon?” Jesse hadn’t been asleep, but he seemed to have zoned out as he watched the landscape go by.

Hanzo waves a hand in his general direction. “With the way...you look.”

A low, warm sound, that Hanzo is startled to realize is a laugh. “You see me as I am because I’m after you. Normal people, they see somethin’ else.” Jesse shrugs at Hanzo’s enquiring look. “Still me, just. Regular. The way I was before.”

 _Before what,_ Hanzo thinks, but he lets the conversation die. The only words they exchange over the next few hours are Jesse telling him to cross over the river this way or that. They’re generally heading south, but that’s all Hanzo knows. He isn’t familiar with this country with its wide brown rivers and softly rolling hills. It’s not unpleasant, though it certainly would be without the car’s weak but steady air conditioning. 

He starts to feel like there’s something at the edge of his vision - something creeping through the dry grasses at the edge of the road. It couldn’t be - they’re travelling far too fast for him to be able to see something like that, but Hanzo can’t stop the crawling sensation between his shoulder blades. 

They’re going sixty miles an hour, but it feels like slow motion as Hanzo watches a clawed, dead-looking hand reach out from a ditch and stretch towards the car.

“Don’t look. Cross the river as soon as you can,” Jesse says from beside him, seemingly unbothered.

“What are they?” Hanzo is faintly proud of the evenness of his voice.

“Nothin’ to worry about. Just some little shits that think they can catch us steppin’ out of line, report back to the big guns.”

Hanzo looks over, but Jesse has his head turned to look out the window. “They’re after you, too? To report on?”

A shrug of a shoulder. “I’m the favorite.” He doesn’t say it like it’s a good thing.

Hanzo is - was - a Shimada. 

He understands.

They wind their slow way south - what should have been a five hour trip stretching to twice as long. They stop to get gas and food. Hanzo isn’t surprised that Jesse’s diet consists mostly of meat, and looks away so he doesn’t have to look at him tearing the flesh into shreds that drip grease across sharp white teeth and full red lips.

It could just as easily be him.

They get into the outskirts of the city late, and Jesse seems to relax when they’re surrounded by lights and bodies and concrete. He directs Hanzo through a maze of streets, and Hanzo could swear they’re just going in circles half the time. He stops at this corner and that, so Jesse can get out to press a walk button, or insert a coin into a newspaper machine before walking off without getting a paper or crossing the street. His movements have the feel of ritual, so Hanzo bites his tongue.

A long, frustrating hour later, Jesse has Hanzo pull up in front of a darkened store front, marked only with a skull made from glowing purple neon. They get out of the car, and Jesse doesn’t bother to knock on the door, just stands in front of it. A camera whirs into life and looks down on them, and Jesse gives it the finger without looking up. Despite that, the door unlocks with a series of clanks.

Hanzo hesitates on the threshold. Jesse looks back at him, something Hanzo only can see by the glow of his eye in the blackness. 

“Come on Shimada. Nothin’ here will bite you.” An echoing laugh as Jesse walks down the hallway. “Except me.”

Frowning, Hanzo follows, making sure his knives are loose in their sheaths. He exits into some kind of office. It’s a strange combination of new and old, technology covering walls that are made of time-worn, dark wood with intricate carvings beneath the wires. Chairs of heavy oak and dark leather, but with telltale bumps and recesses that say to Hanzo’s trained eye that there are restraints that could pop out.

There’s a woman tucked behind the desk, nearly covered up by the enormous screens that litter it. She slides her way out, lithe and quick-footed. She’s wearing as much technology as the room, strips of metal on the shaved side of her head and intricate tattoos of skulls up and down her bared arms and throat that have electrodes in the eye sockets. A quick grin, large purple eyes crinkling up beneath carefully sculpted eyebrows and beauty marks that seem a bit too perfectly placed to be natural.

“Jesse!” she says in a musical voice, and she jumps up to press a kiss to his wide, downturned mouth. He doesn’t react, other than to roll his eyes. She wipes a smear of purple lipstick away from one of the teeth of his muzzle, and sharp eyes settle on Hanzo. “What have you brought me today?” she asks. 

Hanzo remains still as she circles him for a few moments, her movements not unlike any number of predators he’s known. 

Jesse growls, until the woman backs off a bit, perching on her desk with legs daintily crossed. He rumbles out a stream of Spanish, liquid syllables that Hanzo doesn’t understand. The woman listens without reacting and when Jesse is done she pauses for a moment, looking them both in the eyes in turn.

She reaches out, takes Jesse’s left arm and rotates it. Thin brown fingers with sharp painted nails trail down the inside of his forearm, soft scratching sounds against the leather. “So you are finally doing it,” she says, and looks up in his face. 

“I’m callin’ in those favors,” Jesse says. When the woman raises an arched eyebrow, the corner of his mouth twitches up in a sardonic smile. “All of them.”

The woman pats the side of his face, nails a bare inch away from his glowing eye. “Like you’ll be alive afterwards to use them, had you any left.” There’s something sad in her voice.

Jesse clears his throat. “We need to be invisible. To tech as well as downstairs.”

She gives a sharp nod, gestures over to the chairs with a jerk of her head. “You’re lucky, I think I still have a goat left. Along with some new RFID blockers. Sit, it’ll be awhile.”

Jesse sprawls out in a seat, but Hanzo takes a few minutes to look around. The screens show scenes from around the city, as well as - other places. Places with dark and flame and others with soft clouds and hills. Both make him uneasy. He turns, looks at Jesse who is digging in a pocket. As he pulls out a cigar, the woman’s voice comes from over some hidden speakers: “Light that and I light you up.”

Jesse sighs and tucks the cigar away.

“So who is this and why are we here?” Hanzo asks, aware the woman is likely listening to every word.

“Sombra is - a technowitch, I suppose you’d call her. Works magic with tech, literally. She’s been in the game longer than I have at this point.”

“Which is how long?”

A sharp smile, and zero elaboration. Hanzo rolls his eyes and returns to looking around. 

Sombra reappears, wearing a dark robe with intricate symbols embroidered on it that echo her tattoos, carrying a dark bowl and a bag. Her colorful hair is tied back, and she looks dangerous and professional. “You.” She motions at Hanzo with a pointed chin, and then at a stool. “Shirt off and sit.”

Hanzo glances over at Jesse, who gives a small nod. He takes off the black canvas jacket he’s been using as Americanized protection and the shirt underneath before sitting where Sombra indicated. She looks him over, and it’s both the least sexual and most intense scrutiny Hanzo thinks his body has ever been under. Crouching, Sombra peers at his tattoo, at the still vibrant blues and yellows and the dull grey of his dragon. 

She whispers, something with a rhythm and in no language he recognizes. Reaching out, she touches a single finger to the head of his dragon where it rests on his wrist. Hanzo feels nothing, but with a strange sharp pressure that’s like a silent crack of lightning, Sombra is thrown across the room in a shower of purple sparks. 

“Hmm,” she says, rubbing at her hand. “Your family is powerful. Even as they’ve abandoned you.” 

Hanzo narrows his eyes at her and doesn’t respond. Sombra sighs and cracks her neck. “This isn’t going to be fun for either of us,” she says. 

She brings the bowl over. It’s filled with something dark and shiny that smells like death. Blood, but with worse things in it. Sombra mutters to herself, pouring in bits of this and that as she squints up at Hanzo and jabs at his arm every once in a while with a hard finger. At one point she pulls out a small tablet and mutters over it, before dumping the entire thing into the bowl. When she stirs the liquid a moment later, there’s no sign of it. Hanzo shifts in his seat, wondering what exactly is going to happen.

What happens is fingerpainting. Sombra dips her first finger and thumb into the bowl and slaps her hand to Hanzo’s chest, cold liquid dripping over his skin. She draws what looks like circuitry, a motherboard in dark blood and skin that shines silver as it quickly dries and then vanishes like it was never there at all. His entire upper body gets covered slowly, except for his dragonless arm. 

Sombra shoves her entire hand into the bowl, covering it in the dregs. With a final few chanted lines, she slaps her palm to Hanzo’s tattooed arm, fingernails digging into where his dragon was until she draws blood. It feels like there’s electricity spreading beneath his skin, a slow static wrapping around him. 

“You’ll be protected, but not for long,” she breathes out almost silently, but it sounds like thunder in Hanzo’s ears. Sombra’s eyes are glowing solid purple, and he can see the bones of her skull through her skin. “Don’t stop moving. Trust him. Don’t believe the voices. Don’t be afraid to cut.”

She collapses to the floor, fingers ripping painfully out of Hanzo’s skin. Before he can think of whether to help her up or not, she shoves herself upright with a slightly dazed look. “Chingao, haven’t had something with that much blowback in a while.” 

Standing somewhat less than gracefully, she contemplatively licks Hanzo’s blood from her fingers as she gestures at Jesse. “Come on, you know the drill.”

Jesse gets up, telling Hanzo, “Don’t touch anythin’,” as he follows Sombra through the door she’d left through earlier.

Hanzo glares halfheartedly, but Jesse’s already gone. He stretches his arms out experimentally, looking himself over. He feels fine, apart from the small wounds in his arm that are already scabbing over. He pulls his shirt back on and wraps his jacket around himself, trying not to feel like he’s putting armor back on. 

Perhaps half an hour later Jesse and Sombra return. Jesse looks the same as ever, although Sombra has traded her robe for the tech-laced layered spandex she was wearing before. Jesse stops in the middle of the room and looks down at her, something complicated that Hanzo cannot read on his face.

Sombra reaches a hand up, plucks at the teeth against his cheek with nails that make them ring like glasses being tapped. “If you survive, come back and have a drink,” she says eventually. Jesse nods, giving a grunt that’s nearly a growl, before turning and making his way towards the door.

“La oscuridad te espera, Hanzo Shimada,” Sombra says, looking him steadily in the eyes. Hanzo murmurs _pleasure to meet you_ and bows slightly before following Jesse out.

They get in the car and Jesse directs them out of the city, taking a twisty route that circles lakes and traces waterways until they finally stop in a town called Thibodaux. Hanzo gets a motel room while Jesse takes the car. He’s apparently going to dump it somewhere and they’ll get a new one tomorrow.

It’s late enough that midnight has come and gone by the time Jesse gets back. As Hanzo settles in bed, Jesse takes out a bottle marked with one of Sombra’s skulls and sprinkles a dark powder along the door and window lines.

“What did she say to you, at the end of the ritual?” Jesse says as Hanzo turns out the lights. 

“You couldn’t hear?”

“Nah, everythin’ was silent where you guys were. Probably somethin’ she set up.”

“Hmph.” Hanzo says. He looks at Jesse for a long moment, and doesn’t answer him before he turns over and lays down.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Sometime in the pure blackness of early morning, Hanzo awakens.

Jesse is in a corner of the room, where he can see both the window and the door. His hat is covering his face, though, and it moves slightly with his deep breaths. The room is silent and dark, so Hanzo isn’t sure why he’s awake.

The motel room’s window has no drapes - just tatters at the top where some previous tenant had ripped them down. Hanzo has excellent eyesight, but can see just a few details out in the darkness of the parking lot. The branches of a tree - nearly blocking out the faint security light. The slight glow of a red exit sign reflecting off of the lone car in the lot.

One pointed oval of orange, and then another blinking open. 

Eyes.

Hanzo sits up slowly, so slowly even though he’s sure he can’t be seen in the blackness. Hopefully. Another orange light opens up, then another and another. A cluster of five, grouped together to indicate a single creature. Each eye like a vertical slash pulled open in the middle, like no eyes of any animal Hanzo knows of.

He doesn’t know when it happened but he’s at the window, fingers pressed to the glass. The cluster of eyes bobs, tilts like it’s examining him. Grows slightly larger, then larger still. Then a rushing of black against black and the eyes are so large, so very large -

A deep-throated snarl that shakes the room, and there’s a leather-clad arm forcing Hanzo back. Jesse is staring at the creature outside, his left eye shining fiercely. The window glass trembles from the near-subsonic growl coming from his throat. Hanzo reaches behind him, draws his knife out from under his pillow. 

A mouth opens up underneath the eyes, showing teeth that shine with an internal light. “Hanzo,” says a chorus of high, childlike voices. “Hello, Hanzo.”

Jesse reaches back without looking, rough fingers covering Hanzo’s lips. His hand smells like gunpowder and musk, and Hanzo is vaguely discomfited to realize how he strangely enjoys that scent with everything else going on.

“You’re not wanted here,” Jesse says, steel in his voice. 

The laughter they get in return is like nails on a chalkboard, giggles filtered through scream-hoarse throats. 

“Go home.” 

The creature stops laughing, closes its terrible mouth. It tilts its head from side to side for a moment, like nothing so much as a curious dog. “Biggers are coming,” it says, before blinking its many eyes slowly one by one and turning away. There’s a sinuous movement, black against black, like a great cat bounding away. It’s still a long minute before Jesse pulls his hand away from Hanzo’s mouth, before he steps backwards.

Jesse settles himself back into his chair, but this time with his gun on his lap.

“What did it mean?” Hanzo asks quietly, words dropping like stones into the silence as he takes one step and then another towards the other man. Jesse doesn’t answer. “Hound. What did it mean?”

Jesse sighs, and Hanzo is close enough that he can smell the faint trace of meat on his breath. “It means that things’re gonna get worse before they get better. Get some sleep.”

Hanzo lays back down, but the few hours until dawn are spent with his eyes locked on the window, the faint feeling of Jesse’s fingers still on his lips.

-x-x-x-x-x-

In the morning, Jesse tells Hanzo to get out his weapons. “Gonna go get a car, doesn’t help me if you’re not alive when I get back.”

Hanzo pauses in pulling the pieces of his bow out of a bag, giving Jesse a sour smile. “Nice to know you care.”

The hour that Jesse is gone is a tense one, with Hanzo twitching at the sounds of the housekeepers in the hallway. When the door rattles and finally opens, Hanzo has an arrow pointed at Jesse’s face. He shuts the door slowly, raising an eyebrow as he does.

“You think that’ll do anything to me?”

“I came prepared.” He did, at that. Each of the silver coated steel tips on his arrows have been dunked in holy water and blessed by priests of a dozen religions. He hadn’t known what he would encounter in America, and so he dug out the weapons he’d prepared right after he’d made the deal a decade ago and expected demons to be around every corner.

Hanzo is relatively sure that holy water doesn’t have an expiration date. He hopes, at least.

He doesn’t relax the tension on the bowstring when Jesse steps into the room, nor move the arrow from his target of Jesse’s throat as he moves closer. When the wickedly sharp point is all of half a foot away, Jesse touches a curious finger to one of the arrow’s honed edges. It draws blood, as Hanzo expected, but it also makes the skin surrounding the thin cut smoke and blister. There’s an almost appetizing smell of charred meat, and the blood that drips down turns black and flakes away. 

“Hmm,” Jesse hums, as he pulls his hand back and rubs his finger with his thumb. His eyes, when he raises them back up to Hanzo’s, have a trace of grudging respect in them. 

Hanzo finally lowers the bow when Jesse says, “Got us a car.” Hanzo packs up his things quickly, and follows Jesse out to a behemoth of American steel that had to have been manufactured last century. He doesn’t ask where he got it nor why the ignition has a screwdriver in it instead of a key, and Jesse doesn’t offer. When he asks where they should go, Jesse grunts out, “Hardware store.”

They stop at a grocery store first - Hanzo to buy some food basics and Jesse to get a seemingly random collection of vegetables and herbs that he declines to explain. He also gets cloth bags, a spice grinder and twine, so Hanzo assumes that it’s for mystical and not cookery purposes.

At the hardware store Jesse prowls about. Even though he said he looked normal to regular people, the way he slinks from aisle to aisle draws the eyes of most women - and not a few men - around. Finally Hanzo elbows him. “Act human,” he mutters, and Jesse curls a lip to show a sharpened canine in response. Hanzo just shifts closer, murmuring softer, “Unless you want us to get kicked out of here, you’re drawing attention.” 

Jesse rolls his eyes, but straightens up a bit. He sticks close to Hanzo, moving in his shadow as he herds him from the wood to ropes to chains, buying long lengths of them all. Jesse grabs bits and bobs as they go - a heavy lock, a fireplace lighter - but Hanzo keeps getting distracted by the inhuman warmth along his side. Jesse, in his Hellishness, appears to literally run hot, and it’s uncomfortable to be near in the sweltering southern heat.

The cashier, an older woman with thinned lips and a distressing choice of haircut, does her best to look down her nose at them as she bags up the chains and locks. Jesse grins nastily and slides even closer to Hanzo, bracketing him in with his arms. Hanzo doesn’t react other than to calmly pay. He doesn’t have time for small town sensibilities nor the energy to push back against them.

They get in the car, wind their slow way northwest. They stop in the city of Lafayette, Jesse directing Hanzo to a Walmart parking lot where they tuck themselves in at the side amongst heavy big rigs. Jesse sets Hanzo to taking a bar of rowan wood and carving the tip to a point, while he tips various items into the spice grinder and pulverizes them before dumping them into a battered plastic bowl unearthed from the back of the car. 

“Shouldn’t we be hiding away somewhere away from people?” Hanzo asks, gesturing vaguely to the wetlands they’d been skirting.

Jesse just shakes his head, looking around him suspiciously before dumping some oil into the bowl and giving it a vigorous stir. “People are protection.”

“Protection from what?” Hanzo says with exasperation. He’s seen an odd thing or two, but nothing to justify the paranoia that Jesse seemed to be inhabiting.

Jesse doesn’t respond, other than to stick a hand out and gesture for Hanzo to give him the knife he’s been using to whittle the rowan wood. Hanzo hands it over with no small amount of trepidation, which isn’t helped by Jesse stabbing into his hand under his thumb, letting blood drip into the bowl.

Handing the knife back to Hanzo - who gingerly wipes it on the leg of his thankfully black pants - Jesse mashes the thick dark mixture together a few times before sticking his fingers in. Hanzo gets a bad feeling and tries to back away, but Jesse has his free hand wrapped around the back of Hanzo’s neck in an instant. Heavy thighs bracket Hanzo’s legs, pinning him back against the car. 

“Close your eyes,” Jesse says from just inches away, and Hanzo obeys for fear of getting the disgusting blood and herb mixture shoved somewhere unfortunate if he doesn’t comply. Hot fingers covered in cold liquid drag from just under Hanzo’s eyebrows down to his lashes and onto his cheeks. He blinks his eyes open when the fingers pull back, only to see Jesse dip his hand into the bowl again. Two swipes, and the liquid is smeared over Hanzo’s ears, unfortunately dripping into his right ear canal.

It’s that which gives him the strength to shove Jesse away and stumble back a few steps, telling himself that he actually did push Jesse and wasn’t let go. “What the hell was that,” Hanzo bites out, shoving a finger into his ear to try and clear out the gunk.

Jesse slaps his hand away, making Hanzo bristle. “Shut up,” Jesse says conversationally, and when Hanzo opens his mouth to deliver a piece of his mind, Jesse grabs his chin and wrenches it over, saying “Shut up and  _ listen _ .”

Hanzo’s face is turned towards the edge of the parking lot, and past his own furious breathing he hears…

Rustling.

The hand on his face lets go as Hanzo takes a half step forward, tilting his head. It’s almost words, what he hears, words that are just below the level of what he can perceive. He’s not sure of the language, but if he gets just a bit closer, perhaps he could hear it, perhaps he could understand -

A heavy hand lands on his shoulder, and Hanzo blinks to find himself with his toes at the edge of the parking lot, looking out into a field of dead grey grass. He looks back to see Jesse frowning slightly but looking at him steadily. 

“You can hear them now, see them too. Y’need to be careful.”

Hanzo looks back out and there’s movement in the dead plant matter, piles of dead leaves and cattails and grasses that pulse with a movement that’s too close to a heartbeat for comfort. A dozen meters back, bits of what look like trash raise themselves up on too many legs and scuttle back and forth. Eyes glow from the inside of chip bags, from within the wrinkles of a discarded sock. It all looks almost cute at first, almost harmless. But then Hanzo sees the sharpness at the ends of the fast moving legs, the teeth that show from unexpected slits, the field mouse that doesn’t move fast enough and disappears into a half-flattened cereal box with a spurt of blood and a soft squeaking noise.

“What are they?”

“Little bits of bad. These are the baby ones, the ones that creep around on the edges of humanity and live off the scraps. ‘S when you get to where people aren’t that you get the worse things.”

“Worse things?”

“Things that’ll be lookin’ for us.” Jesse nods at Hanzo’s face. “Let that dry, you’ll be able to brush it off soon.” He goes back to the car, pulls out the rowan that Hanzo had whittled down to a point. Using the fireplace lighter, he blackens the tip thoroughly, until it’s more charcoal than anything else. As Hanzo leans back against an eighteen wheeler, Jesse starts to write along the edge of the car’s roof, symbols and letters that squirm under his newly sharp vision. 

Hanzo blinks and shakes his head, doing his best to clear his sight before pulling out some of the grocery bags and putting together some sandwiches. 

He needs something normal to hold on to in all of this.

-x-x-x-x-x-

When they get in the car, Jesse puts a hand on the steering wheel. Hanzo looks over at Jesse and stays silent - the man is staring out the window, sharp teeth worrying at his lower lip. Just when Hanzo is worried he’s going to draw blood, reddened lips part and Jesse draws a breath.

“Why do you need to know where I died?”

Hanzo looks at him steadily. He still doesn’t - doesn’t  _ know _ Jesse, but he trusts him. Some. Jesse’s protected him and outright saved his life at least a time or two that he knows about, and likely more that he doesn’t. He supposes that he can extend a hand.

“We need your bones.”

“For?”

A sharp glance, but Jesse doesn’t seem like he’s going to throw himself out of the car and go off on his own. “We burn them. Mix the ashes with a few things. Rub it into a knife, use that to cut off the…” Hanzo tilts his chin delicately at the muzzle on Jesse’s face. “Representation of your bondage.”

Jesse turns, fixes Hanzo with a stare. “That’s it.”

“More or less.”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Hanzo isn’t telling that the knife has to be an athame, as pure of silver as can be obtained, forged by one pure of heart and quenched a dozen times in holy waters blessed by a dozen priests. He hadn’t obtained it for Jesse, of course. It had been meant to be used to kill himself, in case all went south. Supposedly if he used the athame in a particular ritual, he might make it to a type of limbo before Hell could get at him. If Hanzo’s research is correct, the same knife that could free Hanzo’s soul might also free Jesse’s. 

Although not without cost.

Hanzo is not completely sure if Jesse will be able to survive. He’ll supposedly turn human - but how many centuries has Jesse been this creature? Will he just crumble to ashes and dust once his humanity is restored?

All Hanzo says is: “You know enough.”

Jesse narrows his eyes, fixing Hanzo with a glare. The two men say nothing, looking at each other from just feet away. Hanzo looks at the sunlight glinting off of Jesse’s beard, the ends of the dark hair lighting up with their own tiny fires. He’s handsome, Hanzo realizes unexpectedly. Now that he’s started to see Jesse as a person and not something savage barely restrained by a muzzle, he notices the curve of a cheekbone, the fullness of a lower lip pulled out of place by a cigar. He wonders what color Jesse’s eyes would be, if they weren’t made of fire and night.

No, Hanzo tells himself sternly. Now is not the time. 

“Follow the Atchafalaya River,” Jesse says, finally. “We’re headin’ into swampland. I’ll tell you when to turn. Watch where your eyes go.”

Hanzo nods silently and starts the car.


	3. Chapter 3

Their travel is similar to the day before - twisting and turning wherever Jesse tells him to go. Now, though, Hanzo keeps seeing things out of the corners of his eyes. 

Sometimes it’s just movement amongst the trees, but sometimes it’s not. He sees eyes here, teeth there, the flash of a tail or wings in the underbrush. At one point they pause at a red light - a light that’s there even though the road is in the middle of marshes and there isn’t another car for miles around. A soft noise makes Hanzo turn his head to look out the window and he sees - it. 

It’s a horse, and it’s the most beautiful creature Hanzo has ever set eyes on. It has a long black mane, as smooth and inky as Hanzo’s own hair, and it tosses its head gracefully so its mane flows on the air. Its coat looks so soft, so inviting, and when the horse tilts its head to the side and looks at Hanzo with a warm, loving brown eye Hanzo finds himself nodding because of course, of course he should say hello, he should ride it, he should go with it forever - 

A sharp crack, and there’s blood in Hanzo’s mouth and his eye is watering. He blinks to see Jesse in front of him with his hand drawn back, ready for another slap. Brows drawn down, Jesse gives a frowning nod when he sees Hanzo looking at him. 

“I told you to watch where you’re lookin’,” he says shortly.

Hanzo blinks, a streak of saltwater making its way down the side of his face. “I -” He looks past Jesse and sees the horse, but it’s nothing like it was before. The eyes aren’t at the sides of its face any longer, they’re set forward like a predators. It parts its jaws and it doesn’t have the square blocky teeth of a herbivore: they’re sharp and yellowed and dripping thick slaver that Hanzo can’t take his eyes off of. 

“Kelpie,” Jesse says, then turns and squints at it. “Or maybe a nix or bäckahäst or braag, I lose track of who the fuck makes it over here. Minor demons, take you on a ride you don’t come back from.” He pushes gently at Hanzo’s chest, who takes a startled step backwards.

Somehow he’d made it outside the car and across the road, nearly at the edge of where murky water came up to lap at muddy banks. Hanzo backs up into the middle of the road, immediately feeling more at ease with asphalt - as broken as it is - under his feet. 

Jesse looks at him quizzically. “You gonna be okay driving? I can take over.”

Hanzo shakes his head firmly. If he drives, he feels like he has some sort of authority, however small, over this catastrophe. They make their way back to the vehicle, and Hanzo wraps his hands around the steering wheel. “I thought this,” he gestures around them to the iron chain that’s going around the baseboards of the car and the writings around the top, “Would protect me. Us,” he corrects himself.

He sees Jesse shrug out of the corner of his eye as the car shudders into gear. “There’s been a hundred things along the road so far, y’just got caught by one of ‘em. Not bad odds.” 

Frowning to himself, Hanzo supposes he sees Jesse’s point, but he still doesn’t like it. One glance and he was - was gone. He despises anyone or anything having that kind of control over him. “How much farther?” he asks, instead of anything he really wants to say.

“Only five miles or so,” is the reply.

It’s only five miles, but it’s over asphalt that turns to gravel that turns to dirt, nothing that their car was ever meant to drive on. Just when Hanzo is about to speak up, the oppressing dark trees clear away to show a small, neatly kept house with an actual white picket fence.

Hanzo pulls in behind an elderly but perfectly kept station wagon, and pauses with his fingers curled around the door handle as he hears howls and growls that get quickly closer. Jesse sighs and opens his own door. 

“Don’t worry about it. They’re annoyin’, but that’s about it.”

“They?” Hanzo says, but already there’s two black masked furry faces peering up at him. “Oh. Hello there.” 

The dogs are tall and lanky, with long furred ears and tails. They’re pure white but for their faces, and curious noses shove themselves into Hanzo’s crotch and hands until he finds himself laughing.

It’s been a long time, it feels like, since Hanzo has laughed.

“Huh,” comes a contemplative noise on the other side of the car, and Hanzo glances over with a trace of a smile still on his lips to see Jesse looking at him with his head tilted. The dogs jerk their heads up at the sound of his voice, and Jesse’s eyes widen in alarm.

They race around the car and Hanzo snorts to see Jesse topple over under a flurry of happy doggy barks. He’s so distracted that he doesn’t notice the woman come up next to him until she clears her throat.

“Hello.”

Hanzo turns so quickly a muscle in his back twinges. The woman is tall, taller than Hanzo with pure white hair pulled into a braid under a loosely draped blue headscarf, and a tattoo below her heavily lined single eye. The other is covered by a dark eyepatch, and Hanzo politely looks her in the remaining eye as he holds out a hand. “Hanzo Shimada, ma’am.”

Thin fingers that feel like they could easily crush his hand into bits shake his own firmly. “Ana Amari.” She looks past Hanzo to the cloud of dust that has growls that could be coming from either the dogs or the man emanating from it. “Jesse, get up off the ground. You make the place look untidy.”

A head pops up, hat askew. “Blame those critters of yours, I was just standin’ there.”

Ana turns and walks off without a word, leaving Jesse to sigh and brush himself down as they follow her inside.

-x-x-x-x-x-

They’re seated in a neatly kept sitting room, cups of mint tea in hand and small, delicate cookies laid out on the table. Hanzo inhales the fragrant steam gratefully - it’s something small that reminds him of home. Ana’s seat is set across from the two of them, casual at first glance but as they sip their tea in silence and as the minutes pass it seems more and more calculated. Less of a social gathering and more of the niceties observed before a negotiation.

Ana’s empty cup is set down with a clink and she leans back in her chair, deliberately crossing one leg over the other.. “What are you here for, Jesse? Unless it’s to ask for my blessing,” she says as her eyes flick to Hanzo and back.

Hanzo can feel his cheeks heating slightly - Ana reminds him of a formidable aunt of his who kept a collection of fingers from those who crossed her in an enamel box - but Jesse just rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “Business not pleasure.” Hanzo can hear the soft sound of Jesse’s jaw cracking as he shifts it around, before he says, “I’ve come to retrieve what I have left with you.” 

The words have the cadence of ritual, however unfamiliar, and Ana gives a slow nod. She looks at Hanzo again, this time slower, more measuring. “This is not something you can come back from, Jesse,” she says, and the two of them seem to hold a staredown for a few minutes before he glances away.

“I know,” he mutters.

She stands and disappears down a hallway, leaving Jesse and Hanzo to sit uncomfortably. Just as Hanzo is debating about going for one of the cookies, Ana returns. The blue headscarf she had been wearing is gone, replaced with one of deep blood red. Her eyepatch is gone as well, showing a warped lid sealed closed over sunken space, the whole area scarred over like it had been clawed at. 

Ana holds something large and round covered in what looks like linen cloth. Jesse stands and faces her, and Hanzo slowly gets to his feet as well, a few feet behind at Jesse’s right shoulder. They all stand for a moment as Ana closes her remaining eye and starts to whisper something in a language Hanzo does not know, all trills and glottal stops.

When she opens her eye, it glows a fierce yellow gold, the gold of an unrelenting sun. She purses her lips and blows, and her breath is like invisible flame - burning away the linen wrappings with the scent of char. For a moment she seems like a lioness, barely restrained in her anger and power that is channeled into revealing the object in front of her. It’s only a minute later that the object is shown to be a skull, brown with age and shiny with handling. 

Jesse steps forward and puts his hands out to grab the skull, but Ana doesn’t release it quite yet. A final string of syllables and there’s a sound like the link of a chain snapping. She blinks, eye now the softer yellow of sun-warmed sand. Ana’s hands let go reluctantly, and she takes an unsteady step back.

Hanzo watches Jesse, who turns the skull over in his hands. His fingers run over the empty eye sockets, over the cheekbones, over the teeth - several of which are capped with gold. Hanzo thinks about what it would feel like to hold your own mortal vessel, to hold that where your mind once resided. It’s a strange thought, and he can’t help but wonder what makes up Jesse’s skull now.

A light hand on his arm, and Hanzo turns. Ana, but she is - different. Something about her face is lazy, regal, a cat who rules her household. She holds out a circular stone, flat with faint markings on it. Hanzo holds it up to peer at it, and he can see the glow of Ana’s eye faintly through the translucence of the white mineral. There is a small hole at the top where a leather thong is threaded through, obviously meant to be worn as a necklace. 

“You will need all the good fortune you can get, Hanzo Shimada,” she says, and her voice is doubled, trebled. A threefold chorus giving him a boon that he isn’t sure he has a choice in accepting. He nods, murmurs thanks, and ties the leather around his neck. The stone rests in the hollow below his collarbone, bodywarm and so perfectly shaped that he can’t feel it after a moment. 

When Hanzo looks up, Ana is smoothing her blue headscarf back down and her eye is back to a clear brown. 

“It is late,” she says, voice now normal. “Stay for dinner, get some rest.” Jesse looks up, seeming almost dazed as he keeps running his hands over the - over _his_ \- skull. He nods, and they find themselves Ana’s guests for the evening.

Dinner is something involving lentils and creamy beans, unfamiliar to Hanzo but delicious and filling. He and Jesse do the dishes afterwards, because something in him knows that it’s what Ana would expect. There’s something amusing about watching Jesse in his ridiculous outfit with the sleeves pushed up, scrubbing away at a pan with a sponge, ignoring the leather at his wrists as the cuffs get damp with soapy water.

Hanzo reaches out, gently takes one of Jesse’s hands. He turns his hand over and the leather cuff wrapped around it seems to have no fastening, no beginning or end. Like it was grown there. “Is this also…” he says quietly, then nods up at the harness that wraps around Jesse’s head that Hanzo barely notices anymore.

Jesse nods minutely. “They were the first bonds they put on me.”

Leaning down, Hanzo rotates Jesse’s wrist around, looking carefully at the leather for any seams. Perhaps it was stretched, and then shrunk down? “What hide is this made from?” he murmurs. “It has the oddest texture.” It’s so smooth, both familiar and not at the same time.

He doesn’t realize how close he is to Jesse until he feels a hot exhale of breath on his cheek. “It’s my own skin,” he says, and Hanzo becomes very still. “They flayed a layer off, let it dry, let the skin underneath heal. Then they’d cut another layer. Over and over, building it up, sealing it together with blood.”

Hanzo licks his lips, mouth dry at imagining the pain.

“How long did it take?”

“Decades.”

He looks up, and Jesse is very, very close. At this distance he can see the details of his eyes, how the dark one seems to have pinpricks of stars at the back of it and the fiery one has a black pupil at the center. Jesse’s red eye darkens as the pupil expands, looking at Hanzo. 

Hanzo doesn’t know what might have happened next, because Ana arrives in the doorway. She shows them to a room - just one bed, though Hanzo isn’t going to read into that because it’s not like Jesse sleeps anyways. 

He doesn’t know what Ana is assuming, however.

The bed is soft and has the faint scent of rosewater, and Hanzo finds himself drifting off easily with the feeling of Ana’s steady security around him and Jesse sitting and looking out the window.

-x-x-x-x-x-

The next morning, they drink strong tea in silence as light slowly filters its way through the trees. Hanzo packs his few things up, and Jesse carefully holds the skull that he’s wrapped up in the poncho that normally sits around his shoulders. His shoulders are surprisingly broad without the fabric, bulk that Hanzo had attributed to the folded cloth.

As they walk out to the car the dogs mill around them. They are inordinately fond of Jesse, who acts like he doesn’t care about them, but Hanzo saw him sneaking them shreds of chicken from their dinner the night before. 

At the car Ana leans forward and whispers something for a long minute in Jesse’s ear, the one that is scarred up. He has his head bowed, and seems to be staring down at the skull hidden in black fabric in his hands. When she finally steps back he raises his head and they look at each other for a long moment before she presses her lips to his cheek and he rounds the car to the passenger side. 

With a cocked head, Ana looks at Hanzo. “I did what I could for him,” she says. “For you too. As thanks for the dishes.” He feels like he was judged on far more levels than doing household chores, but he just nods in reply. She leans down and kisses his forehead, and he has a sudden sense memory of the same action from his mother, decades ago. There’s nothing particularly motherly about the way she fixes each of them with a stare, however, and says flatly, “Don’t fuck it up.”

They’re on the road a minute later, bumping over dirt and gravel on their way back to civilization. They go on their winding way towards New Mexico, but zigzagging less than they had before. Jesse seems tense, looking around more, head jerking to stare behind them. Hanzo keeps seeing things - willow branches twisted into reaching fingers, stretched out forms that shift between human and animal that dart under their wheels and cackle when Hanzo swerves, wildlife that comes to the edge of the road and watches them pass by with dead, empty eyes.

It’s when they stop for gas just outside of a town ironically named Eden that the building storm finally breaks. 

Hanzo is just getting up to highway speed after turning from the side road the gas station had been on when he runs over something. He frowns into the rearview mirror - had it been a small animal? Something larger that could have damaged the car? - and so doesn’t see the much larger shape that rises up in front of the car. He hits it hard, and they spin out across the road. 

They settle in a ditch, two wheels sinking into mud. When Hanzo unbuckles his seatbelt, Jesse puts a hand out. It feels like a burning brand on his chest, only a layer of fabric separating Jesse’s skin from Hanzo’s.

“Stay here,” Jesse says, the words layered with a growl that’s coming from the center of his chest. He’s not looking at Hanzo, instead staring out into the road with his eyes flicking back and forth. A bare second later Hanzo’s chest is cooling and the car door is slamming shut, leaving Hanzo alone.

He quickly climbs into the backseat, and puts together the pieces of his bow in seconds, has it strung and an arrow nocked in a handful more. Crouching in the footwell he spins around - windshield, drivers’ side windows, back windshield, passenger side windows. 

Jesse is nowhere to be seen.

Hanzo cracks the door open, puts a careful foot outside.

He still can’t see Jesse, there isn’t a soul around for as far as he can see. Rounding the car, Hanzo looks back down the road, peering into the haze in the distance. It’s silent, too. Not even the neverending peeping of frogs or chirping of birds that the marshland always has. Even the incessant drone of insects is quiet but for -

“Hanzo.”

It’s Genji’s voice. 

Genji’s voice, yet somehow - wrong. Just slightly.

Hanzo turns around, and Genji stands before him. Not Genji of now, with his cybernetic body and voice that has a metallic coating and eyes that flicker from red to green to grey-brown like a stoplight depending on whim. 

This is the Genji of Hanzo’s youth, fresh faced and smiling. “Hanzo,” he says again with a tilt of his head that’s not quite right, but all the same Hanzo is hit in the chest with the razor-edged relief of seeing his brother whole again, of seeing his long-ago fury undone. 

Hanzo’s bow lowers just a bit, string slackening. Genji takes a step towards him, and the spell that had been woven is broken in an instant. Genji, then or now, would never move with such a lack of grace. Hanzo raises his bow again and Genji - the not-Genji - seems to realize that whatever it was trying hadn’t worked.

“Hanzo,” it says again, but now its teeth are protruding from Genji’s mouth like a deep-sea fish, and there are somehow too many joints in its legs when it takes a step forward. It still takes an extra second for Hanzo to put an arrow in the body of his brother, however warped it looks right now. 

The not-Genji grins at him for a second as the arrow sprouts from its chest, doubtlessly thinking that a single arrow couldn’t do much. The grin soon turns to a look of fear as the area around the arrowhead blackens and burns, spreading until the creature loses control of itself and collapses into a puddle of gooey flesh. 

Hanzo gives a single blink of satisfaction, thinking idly for a moment about going to get the arrow - he doesn’t have infinite ammunition supplies. There’s a sound from behind him, though, and when he turns he sees - 

Them.

A crowd of...things block the road, some recognizable as traditional Western creatures of horror. Zombies and ghouls and such, flesh seeming to fall raggedly off of awkward limbs. Others are patches of darkness or balls of flame with eyes, still others are small and scamper - nearly invisible but for bright eyes and brighter teeth. 

There’s a stretched moment where the Hellish creatures hold, restless but waiting, and Hanzo reaches behind him slowly to draw a handful of arrows from his quiver. Something the size of a cat and made of shifting colors and too many teeth lets out a small scream and dashes forward, and everything is abrupt chaos. 

Hanzo fires arrows until he’s overwhelmed, then he draws his silver and steel kaiken and sets about himself with determination. It’s not the powerful silver athame that will - hopefully, if they survive this - save them, but it’s still blessed and Hanzo is skilled. The creatures fall relatively easily, but there are just so many of them. After killing a particularly large _thing_ with an exposed ribcage and two heads, Hanzo catches sight of a crack in the ground that more demons boil up from.

He doesn’t know how he’s going to survive this, all alone with a torrent of Hell.

Hanzo has become a machine - slash, gut, stab until space is cleared, then fire a few arrows. Work his way forward so he can grab old arrows out of steaming corpses. They’re unusable as often as not, eaten away by acid or broken in the fray. Muscles start to burn as Hanzo pushes himself farther, harder, but there’s no other option as the demons keep coming.

Somewhere beneath the screams and shouts - Hanzo is just lucky that the demons get in each others’ way as often as not - there’s a rumbling just at the edge of hearing. The attacks on Hanzo slow for a moment, the demons looking around and milling nervously like animals before an earthquake. 

Just behind where the car is resting in the mud, a hand bursts through the ground. It grabs at the soft earth, leaving furrows before it’s jerked back under and disappears. Hanzo looks away to hamstring something with far too many legs, and when he looks back Jesse is now halfway out of the ground and is clawing his way out as fast as he can. Hanzo can see bony hands grasping at his legs, trying to drag him back down, but Jesse kicks out and finally rolls away into the grass at the side of the road. 

Hanzo fires a few arrows at some demons that decide to go over and get the Hellhound while he’s down, and works his way over to stand between Jesse and the encroaching horde.

An eternity of mechanical fighting later, Hanzo is brought to his knees by a lucky slash across the back from something with claws that curve wickedly and are the color of sickly bone. He looks up into a greenish face with two tongues and a rotted, lipless smile and realizes that this might be how it ends. On a back road in the middle of nowhere, Texas, half a world away from the only family he has left. 

He lifts his chin and closes his eyes, ready to meet his fate with the last scraps of dignity he has left, when he is startled by a resonant snarl that fills all the spaces that bodies don’t occupy. 

Hanzo looks up to see Jesse beside him, caked in dirt but with his red eye shining bright. He has his gun drawn, the large, strange one of no manufacture that Hanzo is familiar with. The demons had paused their onslaught at the sound, and it’s quiet enough that Hanzo can hear Jesse growl out, “Draw.”

There’s a thunderous noise, one that Hanzo only realizes after the fact is a series of gunshots. The largest demons, the ones that seemed closest to leaders that the group possessed, fall one after another. A roar echoes through the silence and both Jesse and Hanzo rush forward into the crowd. 

The demons are much less willing to fight when hit on two fronts, especially not when faced with Jesse’s brutality that has him ripping bodies apart with his hands as often as he shoots them. 

Fewer and fewer demons are there to fight, until the last of them dive back into the scar in the road that snaps shut with a sound like a door slam. It’s silent but for Hanzo and Jesse’s wheezing breaths, until first the insects and then the birds slowly start their calls back up. 

The two men stumble backwards until they’re leaning against the car, muscles trembling now that they’re not moving. Hanzo, the back of his neck resting against the car roof, rolls his head over to look at Jesse. “What happened to you?”

Jesse shakes his head, seemingly at himself as much as anything. “They got the drop on me, pulled me down. ‘S what I was afraid would happen, they’d try and get me out of commission because I’ve gone off script. Took me a while to get back.”

He’s covered in mud and blood and worse, but Hanzo watches as a cut on his arm slowly seals itself together. Being a creature of Hell, however errant, has its uses. 

Hanzo isn’t so lucky, he can feel the cut on his back seeping blood and a hundred other scrapes and scratches throb and sting. The sun is flirting with the horizon - sometime in the chaos evening has descended.

“We should find somewhere to stay for the night,” Hanzo says, and Jesse gives a tired nod. They painfully get back in the car, and it takes a bit of creative handling to get them out of the ditch. 

They drive off into the sunset in a silence borne of exhaustion and pain.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse is the one to get the motel room because he’s marginally less bloody. He’s still covered in dried mud, though, so he takes the first shower.

“You got any pants I could borrow?” he says to Hanzo, awkward for the first time that Hanzo has seen.

With a nod, Hanzo gives over a faded pair of sweatpants. Jesse leaves his boots, belts, and hat piled up outside the bathroom, taking a knife in with him. The skull, wrapped in its black shroud, is on the dresser. Hanzo eyes it, telling his curiosity to quiet down. He spends the time Jesse is in the shower - and presumably trying to wash his clothes off, from the thumps and quiet curses he can hear - pulling out clean clothing of his own and painfully taking his coat off.

The cut on his back has stopped bleeding, but he suspects that it’s from the shirt being glued down with dried blood more than anything else. Hanzo is wiping his remaining arrows free of demon goo when the bathroom door opens in a cloud of steam. When Jesse exits, all Hanzo can do is blink.

A broad, hairy chest leads down to muscled hips, the waistband of Hanzo’s borrowed pants stretched to its limit. There’s no fat on him, though, everything is flat planes of muscle covered by scarred skin. Scars, scars everywhere - Hanzo’s practiced eye picks out whip marks, blade slashes, healed gunshots...he thinks back to how he saw the cut in Jesse’s arm heal without leaving a mark, and wonders what it took to leave the man so damaged.

Jesse’s hair is loose around his face, and his odd eyes look up through the damp strands as he says, “Shower’s all yours.”

Hanzo nods, and escapes into the steamy room as soon as he can stand. Anything to get away from Jesse McCree and his half-naked body and his bare feet, looking so strangely vulnerable against the stained motel carpet. 

The mirror is too fogged for Hanzo to see himself, and he’s grateful. He doesn’t particularly want to know what he looks like right now. The shower takes a while, a laborious process of scrubbing blood and worse from his skin. He can’t help but hiss as soap hits the dozens of small cuts that cover him, stinging like nettles as he cleans them out. God knows what bacteria demons carry on their claws.

Hanzo realizes that in his weariness he forgot to bring clothing in with him. He tucks the towel around his waist securely, deciding to act as unbothered as he can as he opens the door. Jesse seems to have stolen a shirt from Hanzo’s bag, and Hanzo can’t help but notice where it stretches and drapes differently than when he wears it, as he walks on silent feet over to his belongings. 

Jesse’s wet but semi-clean clothes are draped over the chairs and table, Hanzo sees as he sorts through his bag. As he leans over to grab a pair of underwear, there’s a sudden presence, a sudden warmth behind him.

“You’re bleedin’.” Jesse says, and a blunt finger traces just above the cut on Hanzo’s back that, yes, he can feel dripping down the center of his back. “You got a first aid kit?”

Hanzo grabs a compact medkit out of his bag - small, but it has everything from a suture set to heavy duty antibiotics. No biotic packs, Hanzo found out during his first years on the run from the clan that they could be sensed and tracked by someone determined enough. 

He sits on the bed, and there’s a creak as Jesse sits behind him. It says something, that Hanzo is willing to turn his bare, injured back on a man who was meant to drag him to Hell. Jesse has saved him more times than Hanzo can count, at this point. If he can’t trust him - if he can’t trust this -

Hanzo has to believe in something right now. Something other than himself.

An alcohol soaked wipe smooths down his back, and he inhales carefully as it bites into the myriad of scratches that surround the larger cut. Jesse, even with his bluntness and animalistic tendencies, is careful as he cleans the last traces of muck and demon debris out of Hanzo’s flesh. 

“Humans are so fragile,” Jesse grumbles, to himself as much as to Hanzo. His fingers are gentle as they apply butterfly stitches, pulling Hanzo’s skin together delicately. 

Hanzo turns his head, able to see Jesse just out of the corner of his eye. “You don’t consider yourself human any longer?”

A soft bark of a laugh, hot breath prickling down Hanzo’s skin. Goosebumps rise, and he’s glad his back is to Jesse as he can feel his nipples pebbling up. 

“It’s been a few hundred years since anyone would consider me human,” Jesse says. 

“How old are you?” Hanzo asks, not expecting an answer.

“I fought in the war that made New Mexico part of America,” Jesse says, surprising Hanzo. 

Hanzo dredges up his scant American history knowledge. That is...a long time. “Is that when you - made your deal?”

Jesse makes a low noise of assent, but doesn’t elaborate. His hands are still on Hanzo’s skin, but he’s not putting Hanzo back together any more. He’s just - touching.

Blunt fingers trace across the lines of Hanzo’s ribs, up his spine. They follow the ridges and dents of scars, learning the topography of Hanzo’s body like a blind man reading a book. Hanzo feels laid out in front of Jesse, stripped down to something more than nakedness. Jesse’s hands finally stop, spanning Hanzo’s narrow waist and resting on his hips.

“Keep going,” Hanzo says, voice rough.

Jesse’s fingers tense, but don’t move. 

Hanzo reaches a hand behind him, threads fingers through the tangle of Jesse’s hair and pulls his head down. He presses Jesse’s mouth to his shoulder, the chill of the leather and teeth of his muzzle cold against the side of his neck. Jesse makes a noise - something between need and disagreement. 

Turning his head, Hanzo noses into the hair at Jesse’s temple, smells the same soap that’s on his own skin and something deeper, muskier. 

“There’s every chance we die tomorrow,” he says quietly, feeling reckless as he breathes against Jesse’s hot skin. “Try and remember what it was like to be human. Just for a night.”

For a moment Jesse doesn’t move. Then his lips part, his mouth stretching wider and wider over Hanzo’s shoulder until he _bites,_ teeth that are sharper than any normal person’s digging in. Hanzo can’t help the gasp that comes out from his mouth, nor the tightening of his fingers in Jesse’s hair. 

Jesse’s mouth draws back and Hanzo isn’t sure if it’s saliva or blood that’s dripping from his throbbing shoulder, but it doesn’t matter because Jesse licks at him, soothing strokes that shouldn’t be as much of a turn on as they are. 

Hanzo reaches his other hand back and fumbles until he’s grabbing at Jesse’s thigh, yanking him forward until he’s sliding against Hanzo, heat emanating from his skin. Hanzo twists until his stitches scream, pulls Jesse forward until he can breathe raggedly into his ear: “Make me forget about tomorrow.”

With a growl Jesse shoves Hanzo so he hits the mattress hard on his stomach, the air whooshing out of him. He tries to breathe in but Jesse is upon him, his weight pressing Hanzo down. Jesse makes almost beast-like noises, snorting and snuffling as he licks and gnaws his way across Hanzo’s back. He has enough control to not mess with the deeper wound, but he bites hard enough that it leaves stinging patches behind that Hanzo knows will bruise.

If they live long enough for bruises to develop, that is. 

Hanzo curves his hips up, but Jesse is too far away. With an effort he turns over, looking at the Hellhound above him. Jesse’s hair is hanging down, but it doesn’t hide how his red eye is nearly black, the pupil blown wide. His face is - warped slightly, teeth too long for his face and bones not quite settled under the skin. For all Hanzo knows he truly turns into a hound - they haven’t known each other long enough for him to know, and there’s something thrilling in that. 

Jesse leans down, sets his too-long teeth and mouth that opens too wide around Hanzo’s throat. Both men become still. As Hanzo breathes in carefully, unevenly, his windpipe presses against Jesse’s lower jaw, against his tongue. They’re at the deadline - Jesse could rip out Hanzo’s throat and go back to Hell and be lauded for it.

Instead he lets his mouth close slowly until it’s more human, sucks a mean and messy mark into the side of Hanzo’s neck as a hand moves down and thumbs brutally at a nipple. Hanzo hisses and presses the back of Jesse’s head harder into him. The pain braided with pleasure is overwhelming his previous injuries, making Hanzo’s blood fizz with arousal. 

He rolls his hips up, towel doing little to hide his interest as he wraps a leg around Jesse’s waist and pulls down. Jesse makes a low noise before grabbing onto Hanzo’s ass and tugging him upwards, cocks roughly rubbing against each other through layers of fabric. Hanzo reaches for Jesse’s waist, fumbles his shirt up and off as he shoves ineffectively at Jesse’s borrowed pants with a foot. 

It takes a minute for Jesse to get with the program but he soon has his clothing off, hovering above Hanzo and seemingly unabashed in his nakedness. Hanzo wraps a hand around his cock - thick like the rest of Jesse’s body, head flushed nearly as red as his eye. He’s freely leaking precome, errant drops scattered against the skin of Hanzo’s lower stomach. Jesse seems content for a minute to make small thrusts into Hanzo’s fist, letting his thumb spread his wetness around.

Soon though he’s resting his weight on one arm, using the other to tug Hanzo’s towel free. Fingernails that are nearly claws lightly scratch their way across Hanzo’s backside, causing him to shiver and Jesse to laugh deep in his throat. As he nudges Hanzo’s leg open with an elbow and reaches down, Hanzo grabs onto Jesse’s arm. He notices absently that there’s a tattoo there, all black ink and skulls, but it’s not his priority at the moment.

“I don’t feel like internal injuries today,” he says, at Jesse’s raised eyebrow. A smirk, and Jesse shows a hand with blunted human nails. Hanzo rolls his eyes but lets go. He reaches over to his left, digging blindly through the medkit that’s on the nightstand.

 _Why would you put lubricant in a medkit, Genji?_ he’d asked, years ago. 

_Better safe than sorry,_ was the reply, and Hanzo can’t fault his reasoning as he comes up with a tube that he pushes into Jesse’s hand. 

Jesse fingers him open blindly, head pressed to Hanzo’s collarbone with his mouth open and wet against his flesh. Hanzo doesn’t quite know why Jesse seems to be so interested in Hanzo’s skin - perhaps it’s the fragility, how Jesse’s teeth can dig in and leave marks that don’t disappear. Perhaps it’s a feeling of control, knowing that he could bite in with just a bit more pressure and Hanzo would no longer be a problem. Perhaps -

Hanzo pushes his head into the pillow with a moan as Jesse rubs inside of him. This...this, Hanzo had missed. He hasn’t slept with a man in over a decade. Back then it was all slim boys with hungry mouths and hungrier eyes, who were always aware of how Hanzo was Hanzo. How Hanzo was a Shimada.

Here, Jesse couldn’t care less about who Hanzo was, just who he is now. He works his way into Hanzo with short thrusts, hard and fast. Hanzo has one hand wrapped around Jesse’s shoulderblade, the other digging in hard to his hip, fingers slipping against sweatslick skin. 

Jesse has an offbalance rhythm that drives Hanzo mad - long, hard thrusts in, then slow, small grinding rolls like he’s trying to merge his own body into Hanzo’s. It sparks every nerve in his body, and when Jesse’s hand slips on his shoulder to accidentally dig into the deep wound on Hanzo’s back, all he can do is groan at the sensation.

Hanzo is just thinking about wrapping a hand around himself to take the edge off when things get - odd. When Jesse pulls back, it’s like something is tugging inside of Hanzo. Jesse doesn’t seem to notice, eyes lidded and blissed out as he fucks into Hanzo. Once it starts getting painful, though, Hanzo pushes at Jesse’s shoulders until he’s sitting back. 

“What the hell is that?”

“Th’ hell is what?” Jesse half slurs, until he blinks and looks down at himself. “The fuck?”

Hanzo props himself up on his elbows, curls up to look down at an angle that makes his abdominals scream. Jesse’s cock is - swollen at the base, the skin tight and shiny. “Anything you wanted to tell me?” he asks drolly.

“No - that’s…” Jesse pulls out completely, and Hanzo bites back a noise at the sudden feeling of emptiness. Hanzo looks at Jesse’s face, at the sharp teeth and the muzzle, and has memories of seeing the clan’s hunting dogs as a child in spring 

“How, ah. Exactly how _houndlike_ are you?” 

Jesse looks up at him with wide eyes. “This has never happened before.”

Hanzo snorts. “You can’t tell me you were celibate for the past few hundred years. Not looking like,” he waves at Jesse’s body. “That.”

Jesse looks down, to get away from Hanzo’s eyes as much as to look at his situation. “I wasn’t the one doin’ the fucking.”

Hanzo blinks. Now there’s a thought to file away. “Ah.” He spends a moment thinking about dying in the next twenty four hours and of the beautiful and terrifying man on top of him and how he hasn’t gotten off, and reaches to toss the half-empty tube of lube at Jesse’s chest. 

At Jesse’s raised eyebrow, Hanzo shrugs. “Why not?”

“You’re not - weirded out by it?”

Hanzo barks out a laugh. “Exactly what in the past few days hasn’t been strange?” He reaches a hand down, wraps it around himself and starts leisurely stroking. “Better catch up,” he says, the words rough in his throat. Jesse narrows his eyes, smears more lube around the knot at the base of his cock, and pushes his way back in. 

Now Jesse thrusts in deep once, painfully, and stays there, making those little rolls of his hips that grind him right across Hanzo’s sweet spot. As he pushes steadily in, there’s more - swelling. Hanzo bites back a gasp as he’s stretched from the inside, stretched until it’s painful and then less so as the nerves are flattened by the pressure.

Jesse’s resting his head against Hanzo’s chest, breathing raggedly as his hips do their best to shove Hanzo into the mattress. He knocks Hanzo’s hand away, wrapping around his cock to strip it with rough movements that make unwanted desperate noises come from Hanzo’s throat. 

Hanzo’s head snaps back as his orgasm sweeps over him, firing white hot lightning along his muscles and making his back arch. It’s almost overwhelming as his body tries to clench down on the by now enormous intrusion inside of him, and he feels like he can’t catch his breath as he comes and comes and Jesse strokes him through it. He has to weakly bat Jesse’s hand away as he keeps going until Hanzo is twitching and coming dry.

Hanzo reaches down with unsteady hands, pulls Jesse up to him. “Come on,” he whispers into the ruin of Jesse’s scarred ear, traces his tongue around the tattered edge. “Come on, just let go.” 

Jesse breathes wetly into Hanzo’s neck and with a sound that sounds more animal than human, he tenses and digs his fingers into Hanzo’s hips. At first there’s nothing and then - Hanzo can feel Jesse shuddering deep inside him, can feel the throbbing of the knot that’s nestled up tight against his rim. 

The problem is, it just - keeps going.

After a solid minute with no sign of it stopping, Hanzo reaches down and gently pushes Jesse’s head to the side. Underneath the muzzle his mouth is open, red and wet and swollen. His eyes are closed, dampness spiking his lashes. 

“Jesse,” Hanzo says gently, then “ _Jesse,_ ” again when he doesn’t respond. The Hound’s eyes blink open slowly, and he looks up at Hanzo with a dazed look, features slack with pleasure. “How long is this going to last?”

Moving his shoulders in an uncoordinated shrug, Jesse mumbles, “Dunno. ‘S never happened before.”

Hanzo thinks back to the clan’s dogs, to how long they would stand locked together, their handlers keeping them calm so they wouldn’t try to bolt and hurt themselves. He sighs and scratches a hand through Jesse’s damp hair, settling himself in for a long wait.


	4. Chapter 4

Some time later - he doesn’t know what time it is other than ‘dark’ although he feels well-rested - Hanzo wakes when he feels a tickling on his thigh. He blinks bleary eyes open to find that Jesse has rolled them over, arms wrapped around Hanzo to hold him securely on top of him. The tickling he feels is where Jesse’s knot has shrunk and slipped out of him, making room for a steady drip of fluid to leak out and trail down his thigh. 

“Jesse,” Hanzo murmurs into the side of Jesse’s neck where his head is nestled. All Jesse does is make a noise of lazy pleasure in his chest and pull Hanzo closer.

“We should get going,” Hanzo says. Jesse slips a hand around him, plays his fingers over Hanzo’s entrance. Hanzo can feel that he’s swollen, puffy and raw with use. Jesse dips his fingers in, pulls them out to smear himself all over Hanzo. Marking him. 

“This isn’t some strange territorial thing, is it?” Hanzo asks mildly. “I don’t belong to you.”

Jesse finally turns his head, looks Hanzo in the eyes from inches away. “Maybe,” he rumbles. “But you have me all over you, inside and out.”

Hanzo narrows his eyes, brings a hand over to flick sharply at Jesse’s nose. “Don’t make more of it than it is, Hellhound.” He rolls over, stretches as he gets up off the bed. Tapping at his tablet he sees that it’s early, just past five am. “I’m going to shower, we should get on the road.” It’s the last day before Hanzo is supposed to be dragged down to Hell at midnight, the last day to try and get this done under the radar.

He gets through scrubbing himself down by the time Jesse shoves his way into the small space and joins him. Hanzo would complain about the lack of room, but he admits it’s nice to kill two birds with one stone by washing his hair while Jesse is on his knees doing his best to inhale him. He soaps Jesse’s hair, fingers scratching through his scalp and teasing at the straps of the muzzle as Jesse grabs Hanzo’s ass to pull him closer. He comes down Jesse’s throat a minute later, hands slipping through smooth silky strands as his fingers convulse.

Jesse rubs off against Hanzo’s hip as Hanzo holds Jesse’s head still against his shoulder, murmuring filthy half sentences into his ear. Jesse lets out a soft sound when he jerks and covers Hanzo’s flank with hot streaks, the noise low and vulnerable and surely nothing he meant Hanzo to hear. 

They get dressed and packed up in comfortable silence, Jesse checking on the bandage that covers Hanzo’s back with careful fingers. In the car though Jesse gets tense, making Hanzo take back roads and twists and turns, keeping to areas with other people as much as possible.

Santa Fe appears then recedes, and Jesse’s head seems to be on a fulcrum as it goes back and forth, back and forth. He has Hanzo pull over on the outskirts of a town. Chimayó, the entry sign says. 

Hanzo waits, foot lightly resting on the gas pedal, as Jesse stares at the town before them, at the mountains that rise on either side of them, at the lake they passed a minute down the road. 

“You should put together your bow,” he says, not looking at Hanzo. Feeling it’s not the time to ask questions, Hanzo gets out and pulls his bags out of the back. He fits together his bow and strings it, sets it and a full quiver in the backseat. After strapping his kaiken to his thigh he pauses, then takes the silver atheme and tucks it into his boot. The bag with the materials they’ll need he brings up front, tucks it behind the gearshift without explaining what it is. 

“Drive,” Jesse finally says, and Hanzo shifts them back onto the road. 

Jesse tells Hanzo to pull over into a coffee shop parking lot. Hanzo looks longingly at the bastion of American caffeine and capitalism as he tosses a blanket over his bow and starts to follow Jesse. They walk a few blocks, an empty duffel bag Jesse had thrown over his shoulder making soft swishing sounds with every step they take. 

Eventually they get to a church. It’s beautiful, all carefully constructed adobe and dark, weathered wood surrounded by the scrubby New Mexico hills they’ve been traveling through all morning. El Santuario de Chimayó, a discreet sign says, and Jesse trudges forward like he’s walking into a mortuary and not a place of worship. Hanzo pauses before following him through the doors and sees shadows lurking where no shadows should be under the morning sun on the surrounding sidewalks.

They bypass the people in the pews - although there’s no service this time of day there’s still more than enough people praying and lighting candles. At the back of the sanctuary Jesse pushes at a door that’s nearly invisible against the whitewashed walls. They get a few curious looks, but no one asks them what they’re doing.

It’s dark, in the back hallways of the church. Quiet and calm with the faint scent of orange oil - Hanzo thinks inanely that they’re in God’s backstage area. The Western God, at least. Hanzo has his own gods - even if they have currently spurned him, he knows they exist and are active, unlike what most people in America seem to worship.

Hanzo has wondered over the years if he would believe in his family’s religion if asked to take it on merely faith, and not evidence that had been carved into his body. 

It doesn’t really matter at this point: his gods have turned as far away from him as the American one is now.

Jesse stops outside of a door with a complicated symbol carved on it, and knocks abruptly. An old man answers the door, face heavily lined and dog collar askew. He frowns at Jesse, putting his glasses on to fix each of them with a stare. 

“Padre Alejandro,” Jesse says flatly. 

The old priest blinks. “He passed away...twenty years ago now.” He peers closer at Jesse, large brown eyes magnified even larger by his spectacles. “Oh,” he says, and then “oh,” again. “Are you his representative? ¿El cadejo negro?” 

“Something like that,” Jesse says. “I’m here for what he left here.”

The priest hesitates. “Are you sure?”

Jesse just stares, until the priest sighs, closes the door behind him and leads them further down the hallway. They end up in a small room off of the main sanctuary - a bare floor with a hole in the center full of what looks like dirt. The priest turns to Jesse, spreads his hands in what seems like confusion. “They said you would know where to retrieve the...artifact.”

Looking around the tiny room, Jesse grabs a trowel that had been left by the dirt filled hole. Flipping it so he holds it in an underhand grip like a knife, he slams the metal handle into the wall near the small window. The priest gasps, but the plaster cracks away to reveal the door of a wooden cabinet. Jesse pulls it open with a creak of long-rusted hinges, and takes the dusty bag that resides within. He shoves it in his duffel without ceremony and exits, leaving Hanzo to trail behind him and murmur a goodbye to the flabbergasted old priest.

They’re several blocks away before Jesse says, “The dirt there is healing, they say.”

Hanzo waits. 

“Dunno if it still will be without me there.”

They finish the walk back to the car in silence. 

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse has them stop by a nearby lake. He gets out, looks out over the waters. It’s a beautiful day - painfully blue skies, a few fluffy clouds, the occasional cry of a hawk as it circles overhead hunting for prey. 

“This didn’t exist when I lived here,” he says. “There used to be a river, got dammed up.” Jesse seems unreal, against the brightness of their surroundings. His leathers absorb the light, refuse to reflect it. His hat casts his face in shadow, leaving him in his own spot of darkness. 

Hanzo doesn’t want to rush his reminiscence or anything, but they’re on a deadline. “Are you ready?” he asks. 

Jesse looks at him searchingly before nodding. “What do you need?”

Glancing around until he sees an old fire pit, Hanzo points. Jesse’s face seems to shift under his harness for a moment, something Hanzo hasn’t seen except for in the middle of - everything, the night before. He doesn’t say anything, however, just goes over and brushes the ashes out of the pit with a branch.

Jesse takes his bones out of the bag. They’re clean and dark with age, nearly polished looking. Hanzo could swear he sees something carved on at least one of them, but he lets Jesse pile them in a small pyramid. The skull is set on top gently, reverently.

Hanzo pulls out of his bag a bottle and a piece of paper. The bottle is full of lighter fluid combined with holy water, the smell of which makes both men wrinkle their noses as it’s drizzled over the bones. Jesse pulls out a heavy silver lighter, and at Hanzo’s nod lights up the tiny pyre. 

Flattening the paper out and wondering if he’s old enough to need glasses, Hanzo squints at the writing on it and starts to chant. It’s in no language he knows - he just made sure he could pronounce it. He paid for the ritual with two assassinations, and still had to threaten the monk before he’d give it up. 

Hanzo’s throat hurts, more than the smoke from the bones should count for. The words twist on his tongue, threatening to make his own jaws gnash the muscle to pulp. Cracking his jaw with a sharp sound, Hanzo carefully pronounces each line, starting over at the beginning once he reaches the end of the stanzas. He loses track of time, of how long he’s been crouched there under the blazing sun and speaking. Perhaps he has always done this. Perhaps he was born to do this. Perhaps - 

The last of the bones collapse into a pile of powdery black charcoal. Hanzo blinks and sways, still speaking until he reaches the end of the page. He takes an unsteady step back once he finishes, breathing in deeply of air that doesn’t smell of char. There’s nothing left of what used to be Jesse McCree’s mortal form but for a pile of ash, drifts black and grey and white. 

It shouldn’t be possible, of course. Bodies are burned at a thousand degrees centigrade when they are cremated and the bones still have to be pulverized afterwards. There’s no reason some lighter fluid should be able to demolish them, but here they are.

Hanzo pulls out a bowl, shoves it right in the pit to scoop up the ash. Jesse goes off at Hanzo’s request, brings back wood and dry grass. It’s set back in the firepit at Hanzo’s direction, and is stoked back up into a fire once more. 

Taking the bowl Hanzo adds oils and powders, bits of this and that as Jesse crouches next to him like a curious vulture. Some items need phrases said as they’re added, some require odder things. Hanzo can hear Jesse quietly coughing, no doubt to hide a laugh, as Hanzo walks backwards in a circle three times while muttering corrupt Coptic.

After what feels like a hundred different steps, everything is done. Hanzo pulls out the athame and a brush, using it to paint symbols in the ashen mixture. He checks and rechecks - this isn’t a time for sloppiness. As he finishes the final swirl, he thrusts the blade into the rekindled fire. The knife glows bright, so bright he has to close his eyes against it. When he opens them the knife is a pure black, swallowing up light to the point that it looks like a hole in the air. 

Hanzo stands and faces Jesse. 

“Ready?” It’s the first thing other than ritual words that either of them have said for well over an hour.

“What exactly is going to happen?” Jesse looks - not nervous per se, but certainly skeptical. 

“Supposedly I use the knife to remove the bonds that tie you to Hell, and you should be free.” Jesse cocks his head in doubt and Hanzo shrugs. “It’s all I know about it, Jesse.”

Jesse sighs but takes a step forward. He holds his right hand out to Hanzo, raising an eyebrow as he does. “Nothing can cut these,” he says with a nod at the leather cuff. “I. I tried.” His voice says that this trying came with a great deal of effort and pain.

Hanzo grasps Jesse’s hand and slides the now-black athame between the cuff and Jesse’s wrist. It must still be hot, but Jesse doesn’t react. He pulls upward and with what feels like virtually no effort, the cuff splits and falls away.

Jesse stares. 

He pulls his hand back, touches his bare, pale wrist with his other hand. When he turns it over Hanzo sees deep vertical scars, the kind you get when you mean it. The kind you don’t come back from - unless you’re in Hell already and there’s nowhere else to go.

When Jesse gives Hanzo his other hand it’s shaking slightly. Another easy cut, and the other cuff is gone. Hanzo gives Jesse a moment to touch his arms before he steps forward. 

Jesse looks him in the eye for a stretched out moment before he takes his hat off. Hanzo looks him over, looks at how the muzzle is put together. If he just cuts the strap that circles behind Jesse’s head, he’s fairly sure the whole thing should be able to be pulled off the front. 

He lifts the athame and Jesse doesn’t flinch, not taking his eyes off of Hanzo’s as Hanzo steps forward, frowning in concentration. He carefully slips the athame underneath the strap - no need to cut Jesse’s other ear off - and slices through it easily with a single jerk. Jesse catches the harness as it falls away, 

The black leather and teeth that shift from pitch darkness to near transparency now rest in Jesse’s hands. He runs his fingers over the contraption, looking so small against his broad fingers. 

Jesse looks up at Hanzo, and it’s like he’s a different person. Hanzo can’t help but reach a hand out to trace over the sharp cut of a cheekbone, the uneven line of his nose. The corner of Jesse’s mouth tugs up, and for the first time ever Hanzo sees the other man smile. It transforms his face, crinkling his eyes and spreading those full lips wide. Hanzo can’t help but smile back, but it fades after a moment.

“Your eyes,” he says. 

With a tilt of his head, Jesse blinks.

“They’re still - they’re still not human,” Hanzo says. “Do you feel any different?”

Jesse nods, then shakes his head. “I can’t tell. I feel - better, of course, but I don’t know if it’s anythin’ past that.”

They stare at each other, until a voice interrupts the quiet spring day.

“Of course not, Jesse. You can’t think you could get away that easily.”

Standing a mere twenty feet away from them, the devil smiles. 

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse’s face goes blank.

He takes a step to put himself in front of Hanzo, but doesn’t move into a defensive posture. His arms remain slack, although his hands slowly curl into fists. “Gabriel,” he says quietly, steadily.

Hanzo glances to the side without moving his head. The doors of the car are open, just five feet away. He might be able to dive over, grab his bow out and get back -

The car doors shut with a small gesture from Gabriel’s hand. “No, not today, Hanzo. You’ve interfered enough with my erstwhile employee recently.” The demon looks Jesse up and down with narrowed eyes. “It seems like you’re missing a few things. I hope you know it will be far more painful to redo it all.”

Gabriel takes a step forward, then another. His empty eyes are looking at Jesse, but Hanzo can’t look away either. “Remember how painful it was, Jesse, for me to pull those teeth out of you? How many years it took to regrow them all? All those months of carving strips of flesh off of you, how many times it took you to fuck it all up before you learned how to tan it properly?”

He smiles, and even the marrow in Hanzo’s bones wants to shudder. “This time it will be so much worse.”

Jesse lifts his chin, and his voice is somewhere between defiance and regret when he speaks. “It’s been too long, Gabriel. Everyone I ever loved is dead and gone. You made sure of that.” He chuckles, and there’s nothing of humor in it. “Y’can’t get at Sombra or Angie, and you won’t touch Ana.” Jesse’s smile is wide but empty. “I have nothin’ left, thanks to you. There’s nothin’ to hold over me this time.”

“Nothing, really? I don’t think that’s true.” Gabriel’s gaze shifts, and Hanzo finds himself pinned down by it. “I can smell you all over him,  _ in _ him. I think you might care if I make your next set of boots from his flayed skin.” Eyes bore into Hanzo’s and he knows Gabriel is speaking to him when he says, “I don’t like other people playing with my things.”

“I’m not yours anymore.” Jesse jerks a head back at Hanzo. “He freed me, and you don’t have anythin’ to hold me now.”

“Jesse, Jesse, Jesse,” Gabriel shakes his head. “Always missing the forest for the trees. Or in this case, the visible accoutrements for what’s actually important.” He snaps his fingers once, and Hanzo watches Jesse’s mouth snap shut fast enough a tooth cuts his lip on the way. Gabriel smiles

He snaps his fingers once more, and suddenly Jesse is on his knees. Gabriel didn’t put him there, Jesse’s just keeled over, wrapped around himself in agony. Hanzo gets down in front of him. “Talk to me, tell me what he’s doing to you,” he says in a low voice that he’s sure Gabriel can hear but doesn’t care about.

Jesse shakes his head back and forth, a high pitched animal whine coming from the back of his throat. Hanzo sees that he’s clutching at his left arm, so he tugs Jesse’s right arm away, strips his leather jacket off while fighting against Jesse to keep him from curling in on himself.

“Come on,” Hanzo murmurs, and for a moment he’s twelve years old again and tugging at his brother’s arm. “Show me where he hurt you.’

After a long moment Jesse shakily lets his left arm go enough that Hanzo can pull the jacket off. There’s a horrible, acrid smell, and Hanzo can’t tell what it is until he pulls the sleeve of Jesse’s shirt up. 

The tattoo that he’d only glanced at before on Jesse’s inner arm - a skull, wings, some type of text. He can only say ‘some type’ now, because everything is smoking, the black ink eating down into Jesse’s skin like acid.

Hanzo doesn’t know what to do. Bloody tears, thick and red, are dripping down Jesse’s face. Gabriel is barely paying attention, having turned half away to speak to something that looks like a goat and an orangutan had a horrific child. He grips Jesse’s arm tightly at his elbow and looks helplessly around him. 

If it’s the tattoo that’s causing this, perhaps it’s like the cuffs or the muzzle. Hanzo pulls the athame out from where he shoved it back in his boot and pauses in indecision.  _ Don’t be afraid to cut, _ a Spanish-tinged voice murmurs in the back of his mind from what feels like a lifetime ago. Hoping desperately that this was what she meant, Hanzo yanks Jesse’s hand away from his bubbling flesh, and pins Jesse’s left hand to the ground with a knee.

The athame still cuts far easier than it should, and it’s the work of a moment for Hanzo to cut away a thick piece of skin and muscle from Jesse’s forearm. He tosses it into the fire, already able to see where the ink had eaten nearly all the way through. One hand still wrapped tightly around Jesse’s elbow, Hanzo wrestles his own belt off with the other hand until he can get it tied around as a tourniquet. 

Jesse doesn’t make any loud noise, just lets out a quiet wheezing sound that somehow sounds so much worse than any scream. Hanzo murmurs words of comfort as Jesse leans heavily into him, not caring what language he’s speaking in.

Gabriel frowns. “I thought I told you not to mess with what was mine,” he says flatly, and steps forward. There’s something in his hands, fire if it could burn black. He flicks a finger and a streak of it flashes at Hanzo and Jesse. Hanzo tries to cover Jesse with his body, knowing that it will be useless but -

There’s a dull thud, and faint symbols appear around Hanzo and Jesse, as if projected onto a dome of air. Hanzo recognizes them as what Sombra had painted onto him, circuitry and lettering in no language he knew. Hanzo has no idea how long this protection will last, so he needs to work quickly. 

Darkness seems to gather around Gabriel, a patch of midnight in the middle of the midday sun. His hands tear through the air, renting away handfuls of atmosphere that he flings at Hanzo and Jesse. Each hit is slightly louder than the previous one, slightly closer.

Hanzo has few qualms about getting his hands dirty, and squeamishness left him behind the first time he was ordered to take an ear for the clan. He digs his fingers into Jesse’s arm, pushes aside the white tendons and red meat until he can see wet bone beneath. The sigil of skull and wings is carved there too. 

Fine, then.

Shifting around, Hanzo gets a foot on Jesse’s hand, crushing it down into the dirt with as much weight as he can spare. He tucks Jesse’s face into his shoulder, whispering for him to bite down if he needs to. Moving the tourniquet up a few inches, he tightens it until the flesh around it is bulged and white. Jesse might realize what he’s doing or might just be reacting to the pain, because he suddenly is fighting against Hanzo, trying to get away. Hanzo ignores him, tugging Jesse’s body out so his arm is stretched to the limit. 

Deep breath in, deep breath out. The sounds of Gabriel’s chanting and his magic slamming against Sombra’s slowly fading shield provide a background to the rushing in Hanzo’s ears

Cut.

Hanzo and Jesse tumble backwards into an untidy heap on the dirt, Jesse’s severed arm left lying a few feet away. Struggling out, Hanzo leaves Jesse there as he pitches the arm into the fire, and grabs a burning log.

“Don’t kill me,” he mutters, and Jesse’s eyes widen for just a moment before the log is pressed to Jesse’s elbow.

To his credit Jesse doesn’t make a sound, just breathes fast and harsh as the air between them fills with the smell of charred flesh. They stay there together for a long moment, the only sounds their rough breathing and the crackle of flame against blood and bone. It takes Hanzo a moment to realize that Gabriel had stopped his attack, and when he looks over he’s talking intently with the demon next to him. 

Once the stump is all char and blackness, Hanzo tosses the log back into the fire. He can feel Jesse shifting in his arms, starting to get his bearings. 

A put upon sigh, from ten feet away. “Are you two done with your goodbyes? Buer here will take Hanzo, but he has things to get back to,” Gabriel says. The goat-ape thing next to him lets out a screeching yell that has the buzzing of flies about it. 

Jesse makes to stand, and Hanzo helps him up. He’s unsteady, off-balance with five pounds suddenly missing from his left side. Wiping at his face with his right arm, he does his best to mop away the blood. Hanzo pushes his hand away, uses his own sleeve to clear away the crust of red and black.

Hanzo is a sucker, it seems, for as he’s wiping at Jesse’s face Jesse reaches down and snatches the athame from where it’s been tucked in Hanzo’s waistband. 

“Jesse - no -” is all Hanzo can get out as Jesse runs hellbent towards Gabriel and away from the last of Sombra’s dying protection.

Gabriel looks up and rolls his eyes, snapping his fingers. Jesse doesn’t stop, however, and Gabriel’s eyes widen as Jesse slams into him and they roll over the picnic table. 

Hanzo wants to pay attention, but with a terrible scream the goat-ape demon is upon him. They tussle for a moment, but Hanzo has seen how strong monkeys are and has no desire to let the thing get a hold of him. He darts over to the car and rips the door open, grabbing his bow and going out the door on the other side. He crouches, an arrow nocked and ready. 

Another scream, and the demon is on the car’s roof, teeth bared and dripping. Hanzo tries to fire but he’s too close, the demon is nearly on top of him. Cutting into it wildly but ineffectively with his kaiken, Hanzo gets away, just barely. Crouching behind the protection of the car, Hanzo’s head jerks up at the screech of metal. 

His cover is suddenly gone - the demon has picked up the entire damned car and is holding it over his head, fiery eyes staring at Hanzo. Hanzo shoots an arrow into the thing’s shoulder, but not before it throws the car at him. 

Hanzo’s eyes widen before everything goes black.

He blinks his eyes open what seems like seconds later. The demon is next to him, and there’s something in its hands. It lifts the thing up to its mouth and tears off a bite, and Hanzo can’t stop staring because he could swear that it looks like one of his favorite boots at the end of the - 

The - 

The leg that the demon is chewing on. Hanzo looks down, and below his thighs all he sees is the car. He feels surprisingly okay, but that’s probably because there’s roughly a ton of steel crushing his nerves and keeping his blood inside of him. 

Slinking closer, the demon reaches a surprisingly delicate hand out to stroke Hanzo’s hair. “Once I’m done with this I’m going to take you back, eat bits off of you for ages,” it purrs. “You’re  _ delicious _ .” Hanzo can’t look away from the scraps of red in between its enormous teeth, shreds of his own muscles. His hand is scrabbling behind him, though, and he grabs his kaiken. 

The demon leans so close Hanzo can smell its breath, and then it’s gouting black blood all over Hanzo as the kaiken nearly decapitates it. Hanzo collapses back and breathes, as the demon thrashes its last next to him. 

Hanzo looks over to see how Jesse is doing. He’s flat on his back, Gabriel straddling him and holding down his right arm. He’s holding the athame in his other hand, using it to slice the buttons off of Jesse’s shirt one by one. Jesse’s stump of a left arm waves uselessly by his side.

He’s too far away to hear what Gabriel is saying but he can hear the tone. Possessive, almost crooning, the way you would talk to a pet, or perhaps even a lover. Hanzo reaches up, fingers just able to brush his bow. His legs scream but he gets it into his hands, along with the last of his arrows. 

He nocks, pulls, and waits - waits - waits until Gabriel has lifted his arm up to plunge the athame into Jesse’s chest.

An arrow sprouts from between his ribs, then a second. Gabriel’s head whips around to look at Hanzo and the horrific face that snarls at him bears no resemblance to the handsome man of before. Gabriel struggles to his feet, the arrows eating away at his side. 

Hanzo has another arrow ready to go, but his vision is going blurry. He wonders how much blood he’s lost, along with the legs. At first he thinks his vision is really wavering, before he realizes that Gabriel has fallen, Jesse having yanked his legs out from under him. Jesse rolls over, shoving himself upright somehow with the stump of his arm. He holds the athame up just as Gabriel flings a final, desperate hand outwards.

The athame goes through Gabriel’s throat at the same time a bolt of black electricity hits Hanzo in the chest. 

_ At least I had a suitably dramatic ending, _ Hanzo thinks fuzzily as he feels his skin start to burn.  _ I wonder if Genji will ever know. _

-x-x-x-x-x-

“-nzo. Hanzo! Wake the fuck up.” There’s a none too gentle slap to Hanzo’s cheek, and he winces before squinting an eye open.

“Be nice to me, I’m dead.”

“No, you’re not.” Jesse reaches a hand down, helps Hanzo sit up. It feels...wrong, but Hanzo isn’t going to think about that right now.

Hanzo rubs at the back of his head, which throbs in time with his heartbeat. “Why am I not dead, then?” he asks, and touches his chest. The fabric there is singed away and the skin below is red and sore, but it’s not what he expected. With a soft clink, something falls into his lap.

It’s the pendant Ana had given him, on what was only the day before but at this point seems like a lifetime ago. It’s broken neatly in half, black cracks radiating through it as if it was hit by lightning.

“Huh,” both men say in unison. Hanzo shakes away the last of his wooziness and looks Jesse over. He seems to be in once piece, although there are deep claw marks visible through his tattered clothing. The arm...the arm is black and charred but not actively bleeding, which is probably about all they can hope for right now. 

It takes all the courage Hanzo has to look down at his own lap. There are two belts around his thighs, expensive leather ones that Jesse must have dragged out of his luggage. Below that the ends of his pants are wrapped and knotted around the stumps of what were once his knees. Soaked in blood, of course, but Hanzo is amazed he’s alive at all.

“How…?”

“Same as you did to me. Burned ‘em closed.” Jesse clears his throat. “Even though you were passed out, you were screaming.” 

He believes it, Hanzo can feel the rawness in his throat. Sighing, Hanzo looks up and his breath stops somewhere in his chest. Jesse looks like hell: hair matted down with dirt and blood, mud and worse spattered across his face filling in the lines and making him seem decades older than he is but then - 

“Your eyes.”

Jesse frowns, but his eyebrows relax as Hanzo reaches a hand up and smooths his thumb along the edge of his cheekbone. “You have brown eyes.” He does, clear and deep and amber where they catch the edge of the midday sun. 

They look at each other until it becomes uncomfortable, until Jesse glances away and gets to his feet with a grunt. “While you were out I boosted a car from across the lake.” Hanzo can see something blue and generic parked behind them. Jesse glares over at his shortened arm, then down at Hanzo. “Well, I can tell that this is gonna get annoyin’ sooner rather than later.”

Hanzo shrugs. “My brother is missing three of his limbs and gets around just fine. Technology has come a long way since your day.”

“Yeah sure. Doesn’t help you get in the car right now, though.”

Frowning down at himself, Hanzo realizes the truth of this. They manage to get him into the passenger seat, although it takes sweating on both their parts and cursing in at least four languages. 

Breathing hard, Hanzo watches as Jesse walks around the clearing, gathering up bits of broken weapons, ritual debris, and what Hanzo wincingly realizes are the remains of his own legs. Everything goes into the firepit and gets lit up.

“Better safe than sorry,” Jesse mutters as he gets in the car.

“What happened to Gabriel and the other demon?” Hanzo asks curiously. 

Jesse shrugs an awkward shoulder. “Demon faded out to just a patch of muck on the ground. Gabriel…” he glances down at where his arm should be and Hanzo wonders exactly what their relationship was to each other. Jesse clears his throat. “He’s gone.”

“What now?” Hanzo asks. “Are they going to be coming back? Is Gabriel going to show up tomorrow and we have to do this all over again?”

Hanzo is so tired. He doesn’t know if he can do this again, even to save himself. Even to save Jesse.

Jesse shakes his head. “He’s not dead, I can tell you that much. He’s goin’ to be out of commission for awhile, though. Before if he got injured he’d…” he trails off, eyes fixed something far in the distance. “He would use me to help him recover. It’d still take a long time, though. Years. Probably decades, given what your arrows did to him.” 

Hanzo doesn’t want to think about what the help might entail, and what Jesse might have been trapped doing for those years. 

“I’m not -'' Jesse pokes at his shoulder where deep clawmarks are slowly seeping blood and lymph. “I’m not healin’ the way I used to. I think I’m human again.” He glances over at Hanzo and shrugs. “I don’t think he’ll be comin’ back within our lifetimes, I don’t think.”

“And the other demons? The smaller ones?” 

“After we put the fear of us into ‘em yesterday and kicked Gabriel’s ass today, I doubt they’ll be comin’ after us any time soon.” The corner of Jesse’s mouth twitches up. “Buer was in charge of fifty legions, I’ll have you know. Killin’ him would probably be enough on its own to get everyone off our asses.”

Jesse starts the car and pulls off onto the dirt road that leads to the highway.

“So where are we goin’?” 

“Get back to the hotel and pick up my stuff, and then a hospital. I have enough to cover both of us.” Hanzo thinks he does, at least. He winces, realizing he should probably call Genji. “I need to contact my brother, he can come and do the legwork for us.” Hanzo tries not to let a hysterical giggle out at the weak joke, just barely succeeding. “We’ll need to figure out identification and such for you. Then, at some point - home.”

“Where’s home?”

“These days, the southeast of England. Guston. Near the English Channel. Have you ever been?”

Jesse shrugs. “Had to relocate a family of púca in Ireland once, that’s it.”

Hanzo hums in response and can feel Jesse looking at him. “No time like the present to see the world a bit.” 

Jesse doesn’t respond, but the sunshine seems a bit brighter as they drive into the heart of New Mexico.

-x-x-x-x-x-

“I didn’t think when you said they’d be white that they’d actually be...white,” Jesse says in bemusement as they sit down on a bench overlooking the cliffs.

“They don’t call them the ‘White Cliffs of Dover’ as a joke,” Hanzo replies, and tugs his thick sweater tighter around himself. The winds up here are brutal, and he’s strategically angled himself so Jesse is a windbreak.

They spend much of their time together these days in comfortable silence, but right now something is off. Hanzo nudges Jesse’s shoulder with his own. “Talk to me,” he says quietly.

Jesse looks out over the water, the storm clouds that are rolling in over the French coastline seeming to reflect in his eyes. “I feel useless,” he says finally. “Spent my life scrabblin’ for what I could, spent my afterlife goin’ after this or that. Now I’m just. Existing.”

Hanzo lets his words drift off into the windy air for a few minutes before responding. “Genji said you’re using your new arm like it was the original,” he says, nodding over to Jesse’s metallic left arm. His own prosthetic legs are hidden beneath his pants, out of sight but never out of mind. “And - you don’t have to do anything. We have money, you worked at the behest of others -” it’s a kinder way of saying ‘slave of hell’ “- for hundreds of years. You’re allowed to relax.”

“Is this it, then?” Jesse asks after a moment of listening to the gulls call. “England and white cliffs and bein’ cold all the time for the rest of my life?”

A shrug. “If you want. Jesse - we’re not trapping you here. Just giving you a base, somewhere to be safe.”

“I don’t want to go back to Hell,” Jesse says eventually. “But I don’t know how to keep myself out.”

Hanzo reaches his left hand down, tangles his fingers easily with Jesse’s. “You can leave. See how the world has changed. Try and put a little good back into it. And then - come back, if you want.” 

Jesse looks over, looks at Hanzo with those narrowed brown eyes that Hanzo is somehow still unused to seeing, even after all these weeks. “And you?” Hanzo cocks his head at the unfinished question. “You want me back?”

Hanzo leans over, gives Jesse a slow kiss. Kissing is still something oddly unfamiliar to them, something they’re getting used to doing with a romantic partner. They’re getting better at it though, and Hanzo murmurs against Jesse’s lips, “I’m too lazy to find someone new to fuck.”

Jesse barks out a laugh, and tightens his fingers around Hanzo’s as they look out over the ocean once more.

Underneath his sleeve, unnoticed by either man, a small thread of blue starts to wind its way through the grey of Hanzo’s tattoo.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on [twitter](https://twitter.com/thereweregiants)


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